It’s an impressively long list of enhancements in quantity, though most of the changes are fixes and enhanced hardware and plug-in compatibility. For instance, you can side-chain VSTs, and there are new options for routing multiband effects and multi-channel plug-ins.

The big enhancements:

More routing for audio and MIDI

VST multi-out sidechain support and multi-channel effect hosts

Updated controller API

New Audio Receiver, Note Receiver, Note MOD, De-Esser devices

And you can genuinely deactivate devices to save CPU, something Live lacks, as well as take advantage of “true latency compensation.” (Whatever that means – that will require some testing. Bitwig’s explanation of what makes their tech different is that it actually works. That sounds good.) Some other features play catch-up with Ableton Live – tap tempo and crossfader, modulation and timestretching. But it’s a welcome update.

And as we’ve tangled recently with Ableton Live’s spotty controller support and the weird gymnastics required to make controllers work, it’s worth scolding Ableton for not making their hardware integration work better. Bitwig, with a sliver of the development resources and very little incentive for hardware makers to add support, is quickly adding controller support simply because it’s easier to do. This could be a model for Ableton, particularly as its user base and the diversity of hardware for it continue to expand.

If you’re on desktop Linux (yes, I’m sure someone is out there), the choice is easy: Bitwig is a terrific, fun piece of software with lots of rather nice effects and instruments. It’s fast and ready to go out of the box. And there isn’t much else native on Linux that can say that (Renoise springs to mind, but it has a very different workflow).

The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools. And, of course, the elephant in the room is Ableton Live. I reviewed Bitwig Studio for Keyboard, and found plenty to like. But the problem was, Bitwig Studio has competition, and as I wrote for that magazine, to me it comes a bit too close to Live to be able to differentiate itself:

While Bitwig Studio improves upon Live’s editing functionality, it replicates even some of Live’s shortcomings: There’s no surround audio support, nor any track comping facility…

Compared to Ableton Live Standard, Bitwig Studio’s offerings are fairly comparable. But at that price, Ableton gives you 11GB of sound content, more complete plug-in support, more extensive routing, more controller compatibility, and video support.

Since writing that review, two of these has changed. Controller compatibility is a narrowing advantage for Ableton because of Bitwig’s superb scripting facility and aggressive hardware support. And routing MIDI between tracks has been fixed, which combined with the new modular devices, allows for more flexible routing in Bitwig than in Ableton in certain cases.

The problem is, if you want a change from Live, you likely want software that works differently (Cubase and the like for traditional DAWs, Maschine for drum machine workflows, Renoise for a tracker, and so on). If you want a Live-style workflow, you’re likely to choose Ableton Live.

You can read my whole review for Keyboard and see if you reach a different conclusion, though:

And as I’ve seen a handful of people start to use Bitwig, I’d be curious to hear from you: what was the deal maker that convinced you to switch? What is Bitwig offering you that rivals don’t?

The DAW market remains a competitive one, and it’s clear there’s always room for choice. Bitwig’s development pace at least continues moving forward. But I’ll keep repeating: I’d like to see this tool stray from its rivals.

And for me, the main thing is: once that review was done, I found myself returning to Ableton Live and finishing tracks, and not Bitwig Studio – even if I sometimes cursed Live’s shortcomings. Even if that is simply force of habit, it seems I’ll need more to kick that habit. And, unfortunately, you can’t judge software based on its forthcoming features.

Update: I’ve heard from some fairly vocal Bitwig users (well, I did ask). Some of them I can’t parse into specific feedback or use cases (“it’s just better” wasn’t what I was hoping for). But I have heard three themes, apart from Linux use, wheree, as I said, Bitwig Studio is a no-brainer:

1. Dynamic routing. Because routing is more flexible, and can operate dynamically, some of you are using Bitwig Studio as a kind of modular sound design environment. It seems to me this advantage would become more radical if Bitwig can ship their promised forthcoming open modular environment – then, it’s a whole different game, as that tool is integrated with the DAW rather than being grafted on top as with Max for Live. But I do see a use case here.

2. Workflow/usability with sessions. I found that the ability to open multiple projects at once and to have side-by-side session (clip) and arrangement views made less of an impact in my work than I expected. But to some of you, it’s important. Now, in my case, I otherwise found Bitwig’s UI more rigid than Live’s. They don’t look identical, though, and that becomes a matter of taste.

3. Performance. Live can be sluggish at certain tasks; Bitwig has a new from-scratch engine and operations like opening projects is definitely snappier.

Combine this with Bitwig Studio’s suite of effects and instruments – though it has to stack up against Live gems like Simpler, Operator, and physical modelling instruments, for instance. This wouldn’t convince me to switch, but at least it provides and insight into those who have. Keep the feedback coming.

More likely the question is, Can Bitwig sirvive?. Ableton is now bigger than Cubase and it keeps growing at incredible pace. Bitwig keeps struggling with stuff that should have been there right from the start. VST multiouts, hey, our car has wheels now! They seem to be catching up now but it’s still early in the game and the software still needs propper testing. Also, the success of one company doesn’t necesarilly mean the failure of the other, it’s not that binary. Bitwig might do well, but it’s a huge task to convince other users to switch, even harder after the backlash of their incomplete bugfest release. It’s all about people trying the sofware and see if it works for them.

foljs

And then there’s the choice of using Java, and depending on that, for parts of their code. Which makes one wonder how competent they are…

Bob the builder

To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams. You know, it’s a pitty they did all this work just to fuck up the end game with Java. And… anything on Linux should be free unless it’s enterprise, that’s what Linux is… And to ME, anything real-time that uses Java, means a Prototype….// flame all you’d want, but no realtime system is build with Java as a final product, and that’s a fact.

foljs

“””To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams.”””

They don’t use Swing or anything (thank god for that, I guess), they built their own UI on top of Java.

So it’s not even any more cross-platform than C++ in this regard…

sam_dolin

java does not save money just because its cross platform.
you can’t write a linux in java if you don’t know file and folder structures or even environment variables. if you wanna allow menu items, desktop notifications, driver support and fast execution of your code hell then you can’t save money just by adding java to your project. the opposite is true.

if the backend is written in c/c++ then just use qt framework and you use the same language for to frontend code too. no mess with what jre is locally installed.

in 2014 no current application should never ever again require java6 to be installed. but bitwig tries to fuck with us and requires apple’s legacy java6 on mac. this is a no go.

H_Katz

I don’t develop, but I do make music. and for whatever reason, the workflow and stability, load on my cpu, and just the overall feel, I’m happy and surprised to say that bitwig is a better option for me than live.

Danilo

“Can It Escape Ableton’s Shadow? ”

LOL. the question is: Can Ableton survive?

John

More likely the question is, Can Bitwig sirvive?. Ableton is now bigger than Cubase and it keeps growing at incredible pace. Bitwig keeps struggling with stuff that should have been there right from the start. VST multiouts, hey, our car has wheels now! They seem to be catching up now but it’s still early in the game and the software still needs propper testing. Also, the success of one company doesn’t necesarilly mean the failure of the other, it’s not that binary. Bitwig might do well, but it’s a huge task to convince other users to switch, even harder after the backlash of their incomplete bugfest release. It’s all about people trying the sofware and see if it works for them.

foljs

And then there’s the choice of using Java, and depending on that, for parts of their code. Which makes one wonder how competent they are.

I see absolutely no technical reason a project full of C/C++ engineers (for the audio parts) to use Java (and add a huge BS dependency to a different technological stack) for that part of it. Why the fuck did they have to build their cross-platform GUI with it?

Bob the builder

To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams. You know, it’s a pitty they did all this work just to fuck up the end game with Java. And… anything on Linux should be free unless it’s enterprise, that’s what Linux is… And to ME, anything real-time that uses Java, means a Prototype….// flame all you’d want, but no realtime system is build with Java as a final product, and that’s a fact.

foljs

“””To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams.”””

They don’t use Swing or anything (thank god for that, I guess), they built their own UI on top of Java.

So it’s not even any more cross-platform than C++ in this regard…

sam_dolin

java does not save money just because its cross platform.
you can’t write a linux in java if you don’t know file and folder structures or even environment variables. if you wanna allow menu items, desktop notifications, driver support and fast execution of your code hell then you can’t save money just by adding java to your project. the opposite is true.

if the backend is written in c/c++ then just use qt framework and you use the same language for to frontend code too. no mess with what jre is locally installed.

in 2014 no current application should never ever again require java6 to be installed. but bitwig tries to fuck with us and requires apple’s legacy java6 on mac. this is a no go.

H_Katz

I don’t develop, but I do make music. and for whatever reason, the workflow and stability, load on my cpu, and just the overall feel, I’m happy and surprised to say that bitwig is a better option for me than live.

Danilo

“Can It Escape Ableton’s Shadow? ”

LOL. the question is: Can Ableton survive?

John

More likely the question is, Can Bitwig sirvive?. Ableton is now bigger than Cubase and it keeps growing at incredible pace. Bitwig keeps struggling with stuff that should have been there right from the start. VST multiouts, hey, our car has wheels now! They seem to be catching up now but it’s still early in the game and the software still needs propper testing. Also, the success of one company doesn’t necesarilly mean the failure of the other, it’s not that binary. Bitwig might do well, but it’s a huge task to convince other users to switch, even harder after the backlash of their incomplete bugfest release. It’s all about people trying the sofware and see if it works for them.

foljs

And then there’s the choice of using Java, and depending on that, for parts of their code. Which makes one wonder how competent they are.

I see absolutely no technical reason a project full of C/C++ engineers (for the audio parts) to use Java (and add a huge BS dependency to a different technological stack) for that part of it. Why the fuck did they have to build their cross-platform GUI with it?

Bob the builder

To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams. You know, it’s a pitty they did all this work just to fuck up the end game with Java. And… anything on Linux should be free unless it’s enterprise, that’s what Linux is… And to ME, anything real-time that uses Java, means a Prototype….// flame all you’d want, but no realtime system is build with Java as a final product, and that’s a fact.

foljs

“””To save money, Java is cross platform = 1 development team, c++ is not in his case, so that would = 3 development teams.”””

They don’t use Swing or anything (thank god for that, I guess), they built their own UI on top of Java.

So it’s not even any more cross-platform than C++ in this regard…

sam_dolin

java does not save money just because its cross platform.
you can’t write a linux in java if you don’t know file and folder structures or even environment variables. if you wanna allow menu items, desktop notifications, driver support and fast execution of your code hell then you can’t save money just by adding java to your project. the opposite is true.

if the backend is written in c/c++ then just use qt framework and you use the same language for to frontend code too. no mess with what jre is locally installed.

in 2014 no current application should never ever again require java6 to be installed. but bitwig tries to fuck with us and requires apple’s legacy java6 on mac. this is a no go.

H_Katz

I don’t develop, but I do make music. and for whatever reason, the workflow and stability, load on my cpu, and just the overall feel, I’m happy and surprised to say that bitwig is a better option for me than live.

G

Bigwig is just…better than Ableton. A powerful synthesiser on its own even. I switched and never looked back again.

Plexus

It’s not even finished in some critical areas, automation is broken, can delete it from the session view. The program doesn’t tell you anything if you have missing samples in a project. There’s no way to swap samples, very frustrating if you want to work fast. They should be fixing all those critical aspects instead of adding irrelevant gimmicky stuff.

H_Katz

…let me guess, you downloaded a crack version?
1.1 is running very smooth for me, performs better than live on my system.

Plexus

No, I#s not a crack version, it’s the demo. Create automation inside clips on the session view. Then try to delete the automation from the devices. Good luck..

Raffa van der Koont

There is not a problem with deleting automation clips in the session view.

There is a graphic bug where the dot is still shown on the control you automated, that remains after deletion. The dot is removed the next time you load the project. Which is something you can’t do with the demo.

Gulp

If you bothered to explore the software you would discover that reporting missing samples and the ability to swap samples are available in the project view of the browser.

Plexus

I already know that. But the software doesn’t inform you about missing samples when you load a document (dialog, hello?)

Raffa van der Koont

So, the software does tell you, but not in the way that you want?

In most cases, isn’t it obvious when a sample is missing as you don’t hear it when you press play.

lori

If you have lots of tracks, that’s impossible. And every professional software tells you what’s going on. Stop defending nonsense.

Raffa van der Koont

You may be happy making factually incorrect statements is fine, but there is need to be so condescending.

Plexus

You are the one making incorrect statements. There’s no way to swap samples from the browser. Swapping happens on the device you are working on, the browser is for dragging.

Raffa van der Koont

Try selecting “show project panel”… its the middle of the three icons under the browser window. There you can replace samples, see missing samples and do other things too

If you need any more help in learning to use your computer let me know.

Nicholas Allen

That is an obvious improvement that we want to make. At the moment we only show an “!” icon in the project tab. The missing samples you find in the file management tab (used files). There you will see which ones are missing.

D-One

*ment to reply to this instead of making a new post.

Automation in Botwig is broken? Lol

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

I’ve never been part of something new like this and see it take shape. I liked bitwig from day one, but this update just hit me. really excited for whats to come & and now I have a good distraction until that happens. thanks and good on you guys,

G

Bigwig is just…better than Ableton. A powerful synthesiser on its own even. I switched and never looked back again.

Plexus

It’s not even finished in some critical areas, automation is broken, can delete it from the session view. The program doesn’t tell you anything if you have missing samples in a project. There’s no way to swap samples, very frustrating if you want to work fast. They should be fixing all those critical aspects instead of adding irrelevant gimmicky stuff.

H_Katz

…let me guess, you downloaded a crack version?
1.1 is running very smooth for me, performs better than live on my system.

Plexus

No, I#s not a crack version, it’s the demo. Create automation inside clips on the session view. Then try to delete the automation from the devices. Good luck..

Raffa van der Koont

There is not a problem with deleting automation clips in the session view.

There is a graphic bug where the dot is still shown on the control you automated, that remains after deletion. The dot is removed the next time you load the project. Which is something you can’t do with the demo.

Gulp

If you bothered to explore the software you would discover that reporting missing samples and the ability to swap samples are available in the project view of the browser.

Plexus

I already know that. But the software doesn’t inform you about missing samples when you load a document (dialog, hello?)

Raffa van der Koont

So, the software does tell you, but not in the way that you want?

In most cases, isn’t it obvious when a sample is missing as you don’t hear it when you press play.

lori

If you have lots of tracks, that’s impossible. And every professional software tells you what’s going on. Stop defending nonsense.

Raffa van der Koont

You may be happy making factually incorrect statements is fine, but there is need to be so condescending.

Plexus

You are the one making incorrect statements. There’s no way to swap samples from the browser. Swapping happens on the device you are working on, the browser is for dragging.

Raffa van der Koont

Try selecting “show project panel”… its the middle of the three icons under the browser window. There you can replace samples, see missing samples and do other things too

If you need any more help in learning to use your computer let me know.

Nicholas Allen

That is an obvious improvement that we want to make. At the moment we only show an “!” icon in the project tab. The missing samples you find in the file management tab (used files). There you will see which ones are missing.

D-One

*ment to reply to this instead of making a new post.

Automation in Botwig is broken? Lol

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

I’ve never been part of something new like this and see it take shape. I liked bitwig from day one, but this update just hit me. really excited for whats to come & and now I have a good distraction until that happens. thanks and good on you guys,

G

Bigwig is just…better than Ableton. A powerful synthesiser on its own even. I switched and never looked back again.

Plexus

It’s not even finished in some critical areas, automation is broken, can delete it from the session view. The program doesn’t tell you anything if you have missing samples in a project. There’s no way to swap samples, very frustrating if you want to work fast. They should be fixing all those critical aspects instead of adding irrelevant gimmicky stuff.

H_Katz

…let me guess, you downloaded a crack version?
1.1 is running very smooth for me, performs better than live on my system.

Plexus

No, I#s not a crack version, it’s the demo. Create automation inside clips on the session view. Then try to delete the automation from the devices. Good luck..

Raffa van der Koont

There is not a problem with deleting automation clips in the session view.

There is a graphic bug where the dot is still shown on the control you automated, that remains after deletion. The dot is removed the next time you load the project. Which is something you can’t do with the demo.

Gulp

If you bothered to explore the software you would discover that reporting missing samples and the ability to swap samples are available in the project view of the browser.

Plexus

I already know that. But the software doesn’t inform you about missing samples when you load a document (dialog, hello?)

Raffa van der Koont

So, the software does tell you, but not in the way that you want?

In most cases, isn’t it obvious when a sample is missing as you don’t hear it when you press play.

lori

If you have lots of tracks, that’s impossible. And every professional software tells you what’s going on. Stop defending nonsense.

Raffa van der Koont

You may be happy making factually incorrect statements is fine, but there is need to be so condescending.

Plexus

You are the one making incorrect statements. There’s no way to swap samples from the browser. Swapping happens on the device you are working on, the browser is for dragging.

Raffa van der Koont

Try selecting “show project panel”… its the middle of the three icons under the browser window. There you can replace samples, see missing samples and do other things too

If you need any more help in learning to use your computer let me know.

Nicholas Allen

That is an obvious improvement that we want to make. At the moment we only show an “!” icon in the project tab. The missing samples you find in the file management tab (used files). There you will see which ones are missing.

D-One

*ment to reply to this instead of making a new post.

Automation in Botwig is broken? Lol

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

I’ve never been part of something new like this and see it take shape. I liked bitwig from day one, but this update just hit me. really excited for whats to come & and now I have a good distraction until that happens. thanks and good on you guys,

A great way to differentiate itself from its more established rivals would be a collaboration feature that actually works. They already have that listed among the forthcoming features, but who knows what’s behind the marketing blurb and the tiny colorful pictures.

Chank

I don’t think the collaboration feature will even do that. Think about this, in order for that feature to make sense, you need first someone who wants to collaborate with you via software. Second, you need to convince that someone to use the same tool you use, since DAWs are very personal. I don’t see that happening so easily.

Mutis Mayfield

As they stated in these diagrams, it could be possible collab inside the same local network with one registered copy (and I suppose demo in others activated by reg copy) and few partners. The same could be applied to internet sharing (I think it was the reason behind Live 8 has the full app at download and the registry activate your purchases. Later maxforlive was incorporated in the Suite by default as example of this license system)

Axel

Whether the collaboration feature will be at the same level as Ohm Studio it will be worth it IMO. After Ohm Studio has both subscription model and full-licencing, it will be interesting to see what’s happen when this feature come out.

WigWearer

As you can authorise the software for 1 time use you could theoretically share your lisence

Bell

And I would say that is a hell of technology to code. Implementing all that before you even have a considerable amount of users would be simply retarded. It’s like bulding a massive spaceship that costs millions with no people able to make it fly.

and again I suppose Ableton heads and Bitwig heads (ex-Ableton Share feature developers) had a discussion about how max integration in live will do live less “live” (then came the frozen version before 2.5 Do you remember guys?) and the result was…
Ableton frozen cleaning bugs and focusing in maxforlive implementation (and pointing people who demanded share feature to dropbox syncing)
Bitwig guys leaving Ableton and start Bitwig with announced lost Live features like Share and own modular framework plus better remote control surface API (Java and XML if I’m not wrong)
Some developers doing the “lost features” for Ableton through maxforlive (like the AUnetools shared in the post below or Vizzable/V-Module and so…)
At last max7 with Timestretching/Pitchshifting and (finally) not metro dependent transport (hooray) one of the worst parts of max/pd enviroments; secuencing.

So… Share feature is very doable if you have the resources as developer. I have a lot of info in this field if anyone is interested. For start searching type in google “telepresence” “Scenic” or even check platforms like Digitalmusician.

Dropbox syncing only works to a certain point. If multiple collaborators have touched the same project at the same time, then it will result in a conflict that cannot be resolved from within Live.
The killer feature would be the ability to see incoming changes from collaborators and merge them automatically, if possible. If there are conflicting changes, a simple UI could allow the user to preview both versions of the conflicting change right inside the DAW and make a decision which one to keep. Splice is already pretty close to doing this, but it requires a separate client application that is not integrated into your DAW of choice.

Mutis Mayfield

It could be possible in simple form starting from one user as host and the rest as guest. Then the host manage the changes.
A chat/webcam to assign task and minimize the problem could be useful and funny to play (like ninjam, digitalmusician, ohmstudio…)

Casin Noah

nobody can understand you esl

LLCoolJeans

The API uses Javascript.

Mutis Mayfield

Yes, sorry! It is a common mistake from not really coders to say Java or Javascript as they were the same which is CLEAR aren’t.
Sorry once again!

LLCoolJeans

Haha no need to be sorry! I was trying not to sound like the comment police but didn’t know how to say “no that’s not true” politely on the internet haha. 🙂

A great way to differentiate itself from its more established rivals would be a collaboration feature that actually works. They already have that listed among the forthcoming features, but who knows what’s behind the marketing blurb and the tiny colorful pictures.

Chank

I don’t think the collaboration feature will even do that. Think about this, in order for that feature to make sense, you need first someone who wants to collaborate with you via software. Second, you need to convince that someone to use the same tool you use, since DAWs are very personal. I don’t see that happening so easily.

Mutis Mayfield

As they stated in these diagrams, it could be possible collab inside the same local network with one registered copy (and I suppose demo in others activated by reg copy) and few partners. The same could be applied to internet sharing (I think it was the reason behind Live 8 has the full app at download and the registry activate your purchases. Later maxforlive was incorporated in the Suite by default as example of this license system)

Axel

Whether the collaboration feature will be at the same level as Ohm Studio it will be worth it IMO. After Ohm Studio has both subscription model and full-licencing, it will be interesting to see what’s happen when this feature come out.

WigWearer

As you can authorise the software for 1 time use you could theoretically share your lisence

Bell

And I would say that is a hell of technology to code. Implementing all that before you even have a considerable amount of users would be simply retarded. It’s like bulding a massive spaceship that costs millions with no people able to make it fly.

and again I suppose Ableton heads and Bitwig heads (ex-Ableton Share feature developers) had a discussion about how max integration in live will do live less “live” (then came the frozen version before 2.5 Do you remember guys?) and the result was…
Ableton frozen cleaning bugs and focusing in maxforlive implementation (and pointing people who demanded share feature to dropbox syncing)
Bitwig guys leaving Ableton and start Bitwig with announced lost Live features like Share and own modular framework plus better remote control surface API (Java and XML if I’m not wrong)
Some developers doing the “lost features” for Ableton through maxforlive (like the AUnetools shared in the post below or Vizzable/V-Module and so…)
At last max7 with Timestretching/Pitchshifting and (finally) not metro dependent transport (hooray) one of the worst parts of max/pd enviroments; secuencing.

So… Share feature is very doable if you have the resources as developer. I have a lot of info in this field if anyone is interested. For start searching type in google “telepresence” “Scenic” or even check platforms like Digitalmusician.

Dropbox syncing only works to a certain point. If multiple collaborators have touched the same project at the same time, then it will result in a conflict that cannot be resolved from within Live.
The killer feature would be the ability to see incoming changes from collaborators and merge them automatically, if possible. If there are conflicting changes, a simple UI could allow the user to preview both versions of the conflicting change right inside the DAW and make a decision which one to keep. Splice is already pretty close to doing this, but it requires a separate client application that is not integrated into your DAW of choice.

Mutis Mayfield

It could be possible in simple form starting from one user as host and the rest as guest. Then the host manage the changes.
A chat/webcam to assign task and minimize the problem could be useful and funny to play (like ninjam, digitalmusician, ohmstudio…)

Casin Noah

nobody can understand you esl

LLCoolJeans

The API uses Javascript.

Mutis Mayfield

Yes, sorry! It is a common mistake from not really coders to say Java or Javascript as they were the same which is CLEAR aren’t.
Sorry once again!

LLCoolJeans

Haha no need to be sorry! I was trying not to sound like the comment police but didn’t know how to say “no that’s not true” politely on the internet haha. 🙂

A great way to differentiate itself from its more established rivals would be a collaboration feature that actually works. They already have that listed among the forthcoming features, but who knows what’s behind the marketing blurb and the tiny colorful pictures.

Chank

I don’t think the collaboration feature will even do that. Think about this, in order for that feature to make sense, you need first someone who wants to collaborate with you via software. Second, you need to convince that someone to use the same tool you use, since DAWs are very personal. I don’t see that happening so easily.

Mutis Mayfield

As they stated in these diagrams, it could be possible collab inside the same local network with one registered copy (and I suppose demo in others activated by reg copy) and few partners. The same could be applied to internet sharing (I think it was the reason behind Live 8 has the full app at download and the registry activate your purchases. Later maxforlive was incorporated in the Suite by default as example of this license system)

Axel

Whether the collaboration feature will be at the same level as Ohm Studio it will be worth it IMO. After Ohm Studio has both subscription model and full-licencing, it will be interesting to see what’s happen when this feature come out.

WigWearer

As you can authorise the software for 1 time use you could theoretically share your lisence

Bell

And I would say that is a hell of technology to code. Implementing all that before you even have a considerable amount of users would be simply retarded. It’s like bulding a massive spaceship that costs millions with no people able to make it fly.

and again I suppose Ableton heads and Bitwig heads (ex-Ableton Share feature developers) had a discussion about how max integration in live will do live less “live” (then came the frozen version before 2.5 Do you remember guys?) and the result was…
Ableton frozen cleaning bugs and focusing in maxforlive implementation (and pointing people who demanded share feature to dropbox syncing)
Bitwig guys leaving Ableton and start Bitwig with announced lost Live features like Share and own modular framework plus better remote control surface API (Java and XML if I’m not wrong)
Some developers doing the “lost features” for Ableton through maxforlive (like the AUnetools shared in the post below or Vizzable/V-Module and so…)
At last max7 with Timestretching/Pitchshifting and (finally) not metro dependent transport (hooray) one of the worst parts of max/pd enviroments; secuencing.

So… Share feature is very doable if you have the resources as developer. I have a lot of info in this field if anyone is interested. For start searching type in google “telepresence” “Scenic” or even check platforms like Digitalmusician.

Dropbox syncing only works to a certain point. If multiple collaborators have touched the same project at the same time, then it will result in a conflict that cannot be resolved from within Live.
The killer feature would be the ability to see incoming changes from collaborators and merge them automatically, if possible. If there are conflicting changes, a simple UI could allow the user to preview both versions of the conflicting change right inside the DAW and make a decision which one to keep. Splice is already pretty close to doing this, but it requires a separate client application that is not integrated into your DAW of choice.

Mutis Mayfield

It could be possible in simple form starting from one user as host and the rest as guest. Then the host manage the changes.
A chat/webcam to assign task and minimize the problem could be useful and funny to play (like ninjam, digitalmusician, ohmstudio…)

Casin Noah

nobody can understand you esl

LLCoolJeans

The API uses Javascript.

Mutis Mayfield

Yes, sorry! It is a common mistake from not really coders to say Java or Javascript as they were the same which is CLEAR aren’t.
Sorry once again!

LLCoolJeans

Haha no need to be sorry! I was trying not to sound like the comment police but didn’t know how to say “no that’s not true” politely on the internet haha. 🙂

Mutis Mayfield

😉

foljs

Uses Java for part of the GUI code. Deal-breaker.

anerandros

I was entusiast when Bigwig was released. I spent the night testing and it was a _blast_ ; then I too realised that it is written in Java. Never used it again. Yesterday I’ve installed 1.1 but I haven’t got a chance to use it.

Bitwig is quite impressive IMHO, but man… Java…

lodsb

lelz…. sorry. the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). imho that’s one of the smartest moves you can do in a world that is practically dominated by java development (tools, toolchains, libs). if you are interested in the topic you can read the 3 part series: http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/10-reasons-why-java-now-rocks-more-than-ever-part-1-the-java-compiler/
i know it is biased on the other hand, but it also makes clear why going “native” for certain parts of an app is just a bad decision in many ways. if you are angry that java is annoying to install on your mac… well… you know apple. if you chose a tools based on the dev language, I’d call that a fetish 😉

I won’t say, I’d choose a tool based on the programming language. If I would do so, how should I decide whether to buy a Moog Sub Phatty or a DSI Pro 2? Because, they have been programmed in some language to do the things they do beyond the “analog” parts that actually produce the sound.

But I choose to reject a piece of software when it builds (and even only partly) upon a platform that is proven to be a significant security risk to my main music making tool – the computer.

Having said that, I am absolutely aware that I don’t know what security risks any “native” software might bring when installing it. But in fairness, how often have we heard of Live, Logic or Cubase causing severe security issues on Windows or OS X – as compared to Flash or Java?

lodsb

i dont follow. how are issues related to applications that you download, trust and run to security issues that have been reported to affect signing code from webstart/applets/webservices? i mean sure, you can set the browser to run any java applet etc but on a local app?

simzy

My good friend, Ho, works for the Macquarie Bank in Sydney, which is worth billions, a huge organization, and they use Java (keep in mind that they are dealing with very important bank data etc.). Also, I read some good articles recently about how Ruby and Python do not work very well for extremely large web applications, that big companies all switched to Java once their projects became large.
Remember, Java is owned by Oracle, who has billions of dollars and genius programmers. I’m not sure if the latest Java would really threaten your system; they release updates after all.
I really do think Java will make a comeback eventually and be the future. It’s so logical coding once and having it run on each system because of a virtual machine.
And don’t forget, Flash had ActionScript, HTML 5/Javascript is a step backwards… we lost so much getting rid of Flah. It would have been great if companies just gave Java or Flash moral support and bug reports/advice. It’s not like Adobe or Oracle can’t afford to fix them. OR opensourcing them. Flash should have become opensourced I think, and then natively implemented.

I highly doubt that the Java language would be the future, even though I’ve been using it professionally for 8 years. However, the JVM itself is great and supports lots of new and promising languages. Still, “write once, run everywhere” is a bit of a marketing spiel and is not always true, at least in my experience.

Tom Ritchford

Sigh. There is nothing inherently unsafe about a Java *desktop program*. The Flash and Java attacks come from untrusted applets running in a web browser. If you allowed untrusted C++ programs to run in your web browser, you’d have even more problems than running Flash or Java

I haven’t written Java in years and have no axe to grind, but please don’t go spreading misinformation.

Fish Face

I think you are comparing apples with cardboard boxes, when you mention security issues. Bitwig is no less secure than any other software that runs natively or makes use of a virtual machine.

Personally I don’t like Java on my machine either , but that is because of the endless updates to the JRE. Bitwig uses it as an embedded program so you don’t even get those. Frankly, without exploring or reading about it, you just wouldn’t know the GUI was Java based.

anerandros

and I quote these words as part of my reasons.

anerandros

as a System Administrator that knows his way into programming + musician and sound designer, I have my good reason to dislike such a choice. It’s not just a whim about “oh my god java on my shiny mac”.

foljs

“”” the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). “””

So a bunch of mismatched technologies, instead of a unified architecture, and probably using Java’s horrible FFI to talk to the C/C++ code. And the addition of a GC to their product for no good reason.

Yeah, sure sounds competent.

lodsb

you do realize that any decent DAW uses IPC for the different parts (audio/plugin/mainapp), yes? and that jni to c++ (for cairo) can be done in a fairly efficient way (drawing will be the main bottleneck, in general, which is done in native code). so in essence it does not matter. we can argue about the GC being a *possible* cause for performance issues, in general – albeit you can also profile in the java world and get rid of excessive mallocs. if you are so unhappy with java “as a computerscientist and programmer”, well, that’s your *opinion*. but discrediting dev efforts based on this is just … trivial trolling.

LLCoolJeans

You just said it worked great. Why does it matter if it is partially written in Java?

kudd

You meet a beautiful and smart girl and then you find out she has syphilis

Dave

More like, you meet a beautiful girl and find out she is Italian. You just hate Italian chicks. Always talking about their mothers, and they blow up after the first kid. etc.

That said, some people just don’t like Italian chicks. Ain’t worth getting all upset about it. Plenty of other chicks. Me? I adore Ukrainian chicks.

So you try out this new guitar, it plays fantastic, it sounds fantastic, the price is right, it looks gorgeous and then you ditch it because it is made partially out of a kind of wood you once heard on the interwebs isn’t good for guitars?

Wow.

Fish Face

goddammit … its that spruce again 😉

foljs

Well, no, some of us are actually computer scientists and programmers and know what we’re talking about, not just distrust Java for the BitWig because we read something in the internet.

ElectroB

What happened with some of these folks, apparently, is they tried a new guitar, it plays, sounds and looks OK, but the type of internal circuitry used to build this guitar is shoddy and has been proven to break down at short notice (i.e., a pickup unexpectedly dies, for instance, or the volume knobs don’t work properly and make funny noises). I actually had this happen to me in the real world.
So you either return it and try another guitar, or you try to have the circuit fixed (= wait for a new, more stable version of the software to come out).

Personally, I’ve had problems with Java-based apps in the past (including crashes and slowness) and I don’t need to be a programmer to know that there are issues, regardless of how good Bitwig’s features may be. I’m sure they’ll figure something out for the next version.

Raffa van der Koont

I’ve had problems with programs that have been compiled from C and C++. Would you suggest that I don’t install those on my machine?

foljs

No, because those are problems based on bugs etc (which are unavoidable), where he was talking about problems based on the fundamendal design and capabilities of the language (not to mention that it’s a single-vendor proprietary affair).

Besides BitWig also uses C/C++ as does all other pro DAWs, can’t realistically escape it for multi-channel audio work. Java, you can (and probably should).

Ewan Jeffries

Have you actually run Bitwig to see if there are any problems?

CircleJerkProducer

So basically you’re saying you tested the software, it runs great, it’s inspiring you to write music, it’s fun to use, but once you’ve discovered it was written in Java you decided it was shit.

Jesus christ. Thanks for reminding me why I’ve stopped going to music production forums/websites. Time to do it again.

Raffa van der Koont

You can’t be running that java thing, because you may find out one day that its taken over your home, cleared out your bank account and slept with your wife. What use is creativity then ?

No I can’t and I don’t believe I have to, because I don’t believe I have to explain to everyone why I like or dislike a certain concept or execution. And I am happy to risk losing credibility and receiving downvotes for that.

You certainly don’t have to explain why you don’t like Java, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I’m sure the Bitwig guys evaluated their options, and had good reasons for going with Java. Whether this was a mistake or not remains to be seen.

foljs

Well, I for one, and at least another person in this comment section, uninstalled it promptly as soon as we discovered the Java dependency.

And I really could use a modern looking Ableton alternative.

foljs

For one, the Java dependency. Modern desktop OSes don’t bundle Java anymore, and the users shouldn’t need to install it to use a DAW (or have the JDK installed by the DAW).

Second, security issues. Java (also on the Desktop, not just in applet form) has had several exploits in the past years. Check Oracle’s support pages for that.

Third, indicates a bad choice of a technical stack, and perhaps a bad architecture for their app. Java is not particularly apt for the role they chose it for. And even if it was, doubling the languages and technology stacks on your program is a recipe for bugs, leaky abstractions and errors.

Fourth, Java’s performance is not up to par with C/C++ code. This can be problematic in a modern DAW GUI, where tons of things have to be updated in real time, and it often can look more like a video game that a static application. Add Retina/Hi-DPI support strain to that (that BitWig still doesn’t have).

I don’t necessarily agree with condemning the choice of Java so strongly, but thanks for sharing your reasons for doing so.

In addition to the audio engine written in C++, Ableton Live also uses Python under the hood. What is your stance on that?

PaulDavisTheFirst

Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. I’m not endorsing the specific decision to use Java but as lead developer of a cross-platform DAW that runs on Linux, OS X and Windows (unreleased), I certainly understand their motivation.

Clearly I do have an idea about that. I am product owner in a software development team, and I appreciate every day that we don’t have to support more than one OS. But that doesn’t change my opinion about using Java.

I have noticed more than once how Live actually runs/ran on custom made objects instead of standard OS objects (file open dialog, max/minimise buttons on title bars to name just a few), and that is probably to make developers’ lives easier. Live’s late transition to OSX Retina support is another one… But again, that doesn’t mean that using Java is a good idea.

PaulDavisTheFirst

If you don’t actually support more than 1 OS, then I still suspect you don’t fully get how complex cross-platform GUIs can be.

Live uses GL as the baseline; Bitwig chose to use Java for the GUI (not the internals). I could defend either choice, even though in real life I use neither (Ardour uses GTK on all platforms). I don’t see any obvious downside to using Java for this purpose – it is a very very different scenario than when using it as a plugin inside a browser, and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.

That’s alright, but please don’t just make assumptions based on such little detail information. I do have an idea of the complexity of the matter. Just because I don’t have to deal with it in my current job doesn’t nean I don’t know what I’m talking about.

foljs

“””and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.”””

For a modern DAW GUI that has to update tons of indicators and live spectograms and waveforms and sliders and what have you dynamically? And soon, for 5K iMac displays?

foljs

“””Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. “””

Well, I have a (professional) idea.

First, most companies, from Mozilla to Ableton to Propellerheads to Steinberg, to ImageLine (for their OS X plugins) have been able to do it.

Second, using Java hardly makes it any easier. It’s not like they used Swing or some ready made Java cross-platform UI layer.

It’s just a bad technical choice.

PaulDavisTheFirst

2 platforms might seem like you’ve already gotten 2/3rds of the way to three. But actually, you’re barely 1/2 way. Mozilla is the only one of the above examples that actually runs on 3 platforms (or more), and is the only one that uses an existing cross-platform-ish GUI toolkit. The rest do Windows and OS X only. I have no idea if Imageline even use the same GUI technology for their Windows and their OS X plugins – I know plugin developers who use native toolkits on each platform and others who use stuff like Qt.

I don’t know the reasons why Bitwig chose to use Java. I just think that it is defensible, especially if you want to include Linux in your supported platform list, and even more so if for some reason you don’t want to use GTK+ or Qt, and even more so if you don’t want to be tracking down pointer and memory allocation problems.

foljs

Well, it’s not like Linux support will do them any good. They might get 100 users to buy their software. I doubt they’ll get 200. Besides, with the scarcity of other audio tools for Linux (and the presence of one or two ho-hum, semi-abandoned projects for every audio need doesn’t really counter this scarcity), it’s not like it’s a very viable platform for audio work.

“””The rest do Windows and OS X only.”””

Well, if you already do Windows and OS X it’s not that hard to go to a third platform. I’d say it’s mostly indiference for the tiny (and not that used to paying for software, some hardcore Linux advocates even believe proprietary software must end) user base, estimated for the desktop at around 1/10 of OS X or less.

That said Linux also historically lacks in other ways (base audio drivers etc), which make it more difficult, and for which Java doesn’t help — of course you know all these problems far better than me, and are probably more optimistic about their solution.

(I used to follow stuff like Ardour and Rosegarden back in the day, hoping desktop Linux will do the jump).

Dave

Yes! that’s it! They are too damn lazy. After all starting a software company is a pretty lazy activity. And these lazeballs who just built this beautiful piece of software, can’t even build a native UI.

I’m a lazy musician myself, but I find myself with 200 dollars and I am looking for a native UI for one or more operating systems. I don’t think Bitwig is for me.

Maybe I’ll just get something that can create music with this mess of loops and vsts that I got at home…

BitWig asks users to keep an unsupported, not working on later OSes, and with no security updates version of Java.

Of course, they shouldn’t depend on Java for a desktop audio app in the first place, but that’s another mistake BitWig made.

Fish Face

Well, Bitwig was using Java before Apple released Yosemite, without any problems. Yosemite comes along and things don’t work. How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.

Secondly, I run a on Windows and Linux and it looks like Bitwig 1.1 is running Java SE 8 with update 20. I hardly call that unsupported.

Thirdly, Java is perfectly suited as a virtual machine, to provide cross platform GUI support. For a small team, it makes sense of using already existing frameworks, that are less critical to the app, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

foljs

“””How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.”””

Actually that’s very reasonable. That’s what beta and early access of OS versions are, and that’s what any competent developer team is supposed to do, test with the yet unreleased OS version.

The hard part of cross platform GUI support is not having a “virtual machine” for it. That’s not even relevant to the problem. It’s not like they are using Swing or anything, either…

Fish Face

I am sure they do test. Though you must remember Yosemite is currently at beta stage and not currently for general release. As such you do get teething problems, it is to be expected from a beta OS. What you do see from Bitwig is their determination and speed in fixing issues that come up.

“currently at beta stage”? Have you been living under a rock recently? Yosemite has been released to public on 16 October.

Fish Face

Indeed you are correct, though I don’t live under a rock. I just don’t follow Apples release dates as its of no interest to me.

Nord

How can you be sure they do test?

Fish Face

I can’t and neither do I care Product testing is an ever evolving process, very much like the product. Tests are prone to errors as much as any other piece of software. Sometimes things get missed. so you improve your tests and move on. . On the whole, I have not experienced many issues. Those I have had, have been dealt with rather quickly.So, if they have managed to create and improve BItwig without running any test, then I am very impressed.

Excuse me? As a registered OS X developer you have access to all the latest beta versions of the operating system and you should (!) of course (!!) prepare your commercial (!!!) application to be compatible with what is going to be the technical platform. Especially as an OS X developer you should know that, because Apple has a pretty good track record of getting their users to updating to the latest OS all the time – compared to the rest of the market.

This article was about Bitwig 1.1. As far as I am aware I have not read about problems with Yosemite and Bitwig, since this latest update. So any mention of problems between Yosemite and Bitwig are pretty ridiculous given that these have been fixed,

Guest

Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to get access to the latest (open..) JDK from Oracle. Their fault! Especially when then providing JDK 6.. That is AGES OLD, was manufactured by a wholly different company! WTF, Apple?!

No, that’s a misleading message by Yosemite itself, Bitwig does not rely on having Java 6 installs, it brings its own JRE.

foljs

Uses Java for part of the GUI code. Deal-breaker.

anerandros

I was entusiast when Bigwig was released. I spent the night testing and it was a _blast_ ; then I too realised that it is written in Java. Never used it again. Yesterday I’ve installed 1.1 but I haven’t got a chance to use it.

Bitwig is quite impressive IMHO, but man… Java…

lodsb

lelz…. sorry. the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). imho that’s one of the smartest moves you can do in a world that is practically dominated by java development (tools, toolchains, libs). if you are interested in the topic you can read the 3 part series: http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/10-reasons-why-java-now-rocks-more-than-ever-part-1-the-java-compiler/
i know it is biased on the other hand, but it also makes clear why going “native” for certain parts of an app is just a bad decision in many ways. if you are angry that java is annoying to install on your mac… well… you know apple. if you chose a tools based on the dev language, I’d call that a fetish 😉

I won’t say, I’d choose a tool based on the programming language. If I would do so, how should I decide whether to buy a Moog Sub Phatty or a DSI Pro 2? Because, they have been programmed in some language to do the things they do beyond the “analog” parts that actually produce the sound.

But I choose to reject a piece of software when it builds (and even only partly) upon a platform that is proven to be a significant security risk to my main music making tool – the computer.

Having said that, I am absolutely aware that I don’t know what security risks any “native” software might bring when installing it. But in fairness, how often have we heard of Live, Logic or Cubase causing severe security issues on Windows or OS X – as compared to Flash or Java?

lodsb

i dont follow. how are issues related to applications that you download, trust and run to security issues that have been reported to affect signing code from webstart/applets/webservices? i mean sure, you can set the browser to run any java applet etc but on a local app?

simzy

My good friend, Ho, works for the Macquarie Bank in Sydney, which is worth billions, a huge organization, and they use Java (keep in mind that they are dealing with very important bank data etc.). Also, I read some good articles recently about how Ruby and Python do not work very well for extremely large web applications, that big companies all switched to Java once their projects became large.
Remember, Java is owned by Oracle, who has billions of dollars and genius programmers. I’m not sure if the latest Java would really threaten your system; they release updates after all.
I really do think Java will make a comeback eventually and be the future. It’s so logical coding once and having it run on each system because of a virtual machine.
And don’t forget, Flash had ActionScript, HTML 5/Javascript is a step backwards… we lost so much getting rid of Flah. It would have been great if companies just gave Java or Flash moral support and bug reports/advice. It’s not like Adobe or Oracle can’t afford to fix them. OR opensourcing them. Flash should have become opensourced I think, and then natively implemented.

I highly doubt that the Java language would be the future, even though I’ve been using it professionally for 8 years. However, the JVM itself is great and supports lots of new and promising languages. Still, “write once, run everywhere” is a bit of a marketing spiel and is not always true, at least in my experience.

Tom Ritchford

Sigh. There is nothing inherently unsafe about a Java *desktop program*. The Flash and Java attacks come from untrusted applets running in a web browser. If you allowed untrusted C++ programs to run in your web browser, you’d have even more problems than running Flash or Java

I haven’t written Java in years and have no axe to grind, but please don’t go spreading misinformation.

Mo Jo

I think you are comparing apples with cardboard boxes, when you mention security issues. Bitwig is no less secure than any other software that runs natively or makes use of a virtual machine.

Personally I don’t like Java on my machine either , but that is because of the endless updates to the JRE. Bitwig uses it as an embedded program so you don’t even get those. Frankly, without exploring or reading about it, you just wouldn’t know the GUI was Java based.

anerandros

and I quote these words as part of my reasons.

anerandros

as a System Administrator that knows his way into programming + musician and sound designer, I have my good reason to dislike such a choice. It’s not just a whim about “oh my god java on my shiny mac”.

foljs

“”” the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). “””

So a bunch of mismatched technologies, instead of a unified architecture, and probably using Java’s horrible FFI to talk to the C/C++ code. And the addition of a GC to their product for no good reason.

Yeah, sure sounds competent.

lodsb

you do realize that any decent DAW uses IPC for the different parts (audio/plugin/mainapp), yes? and that jni to c++ (for cairo) can be done in a fairly efficient way (drawing will be the main bottleneck, in general, which is done in native code). so in essence it does not matter. we can argue about the GC being a *possible* cause for performance issues, in general – albeit you can also profile in the java world and get rid of excessive mallocs. if you are so unhappy with java “as a computerscientist and programmer”, well, that’s your *opinion*. but discrediting dev efforts based on this is just … trivial trolling.

LLCoolJeans

You just said it worked great. Why does it matter if it is partially written in Java?

kudd

You meet a beautiful and smart girl and then you find out she has syphilis

Dave

More like, you meet a beautiful girl and find out she is Italian. You just hate Italian chicks. Always talking about their mothers, and they blow up after the first kid. etc.

That said, some people just don’t like Italian chicks. Ain’t worth getting all upset about it. Plenty of other chicks. Me? I adore Ukrainian chicks.

So you try out this new guitar, it plays fantastic, it sounds fantastic, the price is right, it looks gorgeous and then you ditch it because it is made partially out of a kind of wood you once heard on the interwebs isn’t good for guitars?

Wow.

Mo Jo

goddammit … its that spruce again 😉

foljs

Well, no, some of us are actually computer scientists and programmers and know what we’re talking about, not just distrust Java for the BitWig because we read something in the internet.

ElectroB

What happened with some of these folks, apparently, is they tried a new guitar, it plays, sounds and looks OK, but the type of internal circuitry used to build this guitar is shoddy and has been proven to break down at short notice (i.e., a pickup unexpectedly dies, for instance, or the volume knobs don’t work properly and make funny noises). I actually had this happen to me in the real world.
So you either return it and try another guitar, or you try to have the circuit fixed (= wait for a new, more stable version of the software to come out).

Personally, I’ve had problems with Java-based apps in the past (including crashes, stability and slowness) and I don’t need to be a programmer to know that there are issues

As a live musician, I don’t really care how good Bitwig sounds – if I suspect that it is not stable, I will NOT use it in a professional setting, regardless of how good Bitwig’s features may be. I’m sure they’ll figure something out for the next version. I held on to Ableton 7 for a full year after v8 came out for this very reason, and I only updated after testing and making sure the shitstorm was over.

So no, I don’t think these comments we just read are based simply on “something you just read on the interwebs”. Moving on.

Raffa van der Koont

I’ve had problems with programs that have been compiled from C and C++. Would you suggest that I don’t install those on my machine?

foljs

No, because those are problems based on bugs etc (which are unavoidable), where he was talking about problems based on the fundamendal design and capabilities of the language (not to mention that it’s a single-vendor proprietary affair).

Besides BitWig also uses C/C++ as does all other pro DAWs, can’t realistically escape it for multi-channel audio work. Java, you can (and probably should).

Ewan Jeffries

Have you actually run Bitwig to see if there are any problems?

CircleJerkProducer

So basically you’re saying you tested the software, it runs great, it’s inspiring you to write music, it’s fun to use, but once you’ve discovered it was written in Java you decided it was shit.

Jesus christ. Thanks for reminding me why I’ve stopped going to music production forums/websites. Time to do it again.

Raffa van der Koont

You can’t be running that java thing, because you may find out one day that its taken over your home, cleared out your bank account and slept with your wife. What use is creativity then ?

No I can’t and I don’t believe I have to, because I don’t believe I have to explain to everyone why I like or dislike a certain concept or execution. And I am happy to risk losing credibility and receiving downvotes for that.

You certainly don’t have to explain why you don’t like Java, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I’m sure the Bitwig guys evaluated their options, and had good reasons for going with Java. Whether this was a mistake or not remains to be seen.

foljs

Well, I for one, and at least another person in this comment section, uninstalled it promptly as soon as we discovered the Java dependency.

And I really could use a modern looking Ableton alternative.

foljs

For one, the Java dependency. Modern desktop OSes don’t bundle Java anymore, and the users shouldn’t need to install it to use a DAW (or have the JDK installed by the DAW).

Second, security issues. Java (also on the Desktop, not just in applet form) has had several exploits in the past years. Check Oracle’s support pages for that.

Third, indicates a bad choice of a technical stack, and perhaps a bad architecture for their app. Java is not particularly apt for the role they chose it for. And even if it was, doubling the languages and technology stacks on your program is a recipe for bugs, leaky abstractions and errors.

Fourth, Java’s performance is not up to par with C/C++ code. This can be problematic in a modern DAW GUI, where tons of things have to be updated in real time, and it often can look more like a video game that a static application. Add Retina/Hi-DPI support strain to that (that BitWig still doesn’t have).

I don’t necessarily agree with condemning the choice of Java so strongly, but thanks for sharing your reasons for doing so.

In addition to the audio engine written in C++, Ableton Live also uses Python under the hood. What is your stance on that?

PaulDavisTheFirst

Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. I’m not endorsing the specific decision to use Java but as lead developer of a cross-platform DAW that runs on Linux, OS X and Windows (unreleased), I certainly understand their motivation.

Clearly I do have an idea about that. I am product owner in a software development team, and I appreciate every day that we don’t have to support more than one OS. But that doesn’t change my opinion about using Java.

I have noticed more than once how Live actually runs/ran on custom made objects instead of standard OS objects (file open dialog, max/minimise buttons on title bars to name just a few), and that is probably to make developers’ lives easier. Live’s late transition to OSX Retina support is another one… But again, that doesn’t mean that using Java is a good idea.

PaulDavisTheFirst

If you don’t actually support more than 1 OS, then I still suspect you don’t fully get how complex cross-platform GUIs can be.

Live uses GL as the baseline; Bitwig chose to use Java for the GUI (not the internals). I could defend either choice, even though in real life I use neither (Ardour uses GTK on all platforms). I don’t see any obvious downside to using Java for this purpose – it is a very very different scenario than when using it as a plugin inside a browser, and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.

That’s alright, but please don’t just make assumptions based on such little detail information. I do have an idea of the complexity of the matter. Just because I don’t have to deal with it in my current job doesn’t nean I don’t know what I’m talking about.

foljs

“””and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.”””

For a modern DAW GUI that has to update tons of indicators and live spectograms and waveforms and sliders and what have you dynamically? And soon, for 5K iMac displays?

foljs

“””Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. “””

Well, I have a (professional) idea.

First, most companies, from Mozilla to Ableton to Propellerheads to Steinberg, to ImageLine (for their OS X plugins) have been able to do it.

Second, using Java hardly makes it any easier. It’s not like they used Swing or some ready made Java cross-platform UI layer.

It’s just a bad technical choice.

PaulDavisTheFirst

2 platforms might seem like you’ve already gotten 2/3rds of the way to three. But actually, you’re barely 1/2 way. Mozilla is the only one of the above examples that actually runs on 3 platforms (or more), and is the only one that uses an existing cross-platform-ish GUI toolkit. The rest do Windows and OS X only. I have no idea if Imageline even use the same GUI technology for their Windows and their OS X plugins – I know plugin developers who use native toolkits on each platform and others who use stuff like Qt.

I don’t know the reasons why Bitwig chose to use Java. I just think that it is defensible, especially if you want to include Linux in your supported platform list, and even more so if for some reason you don’t want to use GTK+ or Qt, and even more so if you don’t want to be tracking down pointer and memory allocation problems.

foljs

Well, it’s not like Linux support will do them any good. They might get 100 users to buy their software. I doubt they’ll get 200. Besides, with the scarcity of other audio tools for Linux (and the presence of one or two ho-hum, semi-abandoned projects for every audio need doesn’t really counter this scarcity), it’s not like it’s a very viable platform for audio work.

“””The rest do Windows and OS X only.”””

Well, if you already do Windows and OS X it’s not that hard to go to a third platform. I’d say it’s mostly indiference for the tiny (and not that used to paying for software, some hardcore Linux advocates even believe proprietary software must end) user base, estimated for the desktop at around 1/10 of OS X or less.

That said Linux also historically lacks in other ways (base audio drivers etc), which make it more difficult, and for which Java doesn’t help — of course you know all these problems far better than me, and are probably more optimistic about their solution.

(I used to follow stuff like Ardour and Rosegarden back in the day, hoping desktop Linux will do the jump).

Dave

Yes! that’s it! They are too damn lazy. After all starting a software company is a pretty lazy activity. And these lazeballs who just built this beautiful piece of software, can’t even build a native UI.

I’m a lazy musician myself, but I find myself with 200 dollars and I am looking for a native UI for one or more operating systems. I don’t think Bitwig is for me.

Maybe I’ll just get something that can create music with this mess of loops and vsts that I got at home…

BitWig asks users to keep an unsupported, not working on later OSes, and with no security updates version of Java.

Of course, they shouldn’t depend on Java for a desktop audio app in the first place, but that’s another mistake BitWig made.

Mo Jo

Well, Bitwig was using Java before Apple released Yosemite, without any problems. Yosemite comes along and things don’t work. How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.

Secondly, I run a on Windows and Linux and it looks like Bitwig 1.1 is running Java SE 8 with update 20. I hardly call that unsupported.

Thirdly, Java is perfectly suited as a virtual machine, to provide cross platform GUI support. For a small team, it makes sense of using already existing frameworks, that are less critical to the app, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

foljs

“””How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.”””

Actually that’s very reasonable. That’s what beta and early access of OS versions are, and that’s what any competent developer team is supposed to do, test with the yet unreleased OS version.

The hard part of cross platform GUI support is not having a “virtual machine” for it. That’s not even relevant to the problem. It’s not like they are using Swing or anything, either…

Mo Jo

I am sure they do test. Though you must remember Yosemite is currently at beta stage and not currently for general release. As such you do get teething problems, it is to be expected from a beta OS. What you do see from Bitwig is their determination and speed in fixing issues that come up.

“currently at beta stage”? Have you been living under a rock recently? Yosemite has been released to public on 16 October.

Mo Jo

Indeed you are correct, though I don’t live under a rock. I just don’t follow Apples release dates as its of no interest to me.

Nord

How can you be sure they do test?

Mo Jo

I can’t and neither do I care Product testing is an ever evolving process, very much like the product. Tests are prone to errors as much as any other piece of software. Sometimes things get missed. so you improve your tests and move on. . On the whole, I have not experienced many issues. Those I have had, have been dealt with rather quickly.So, if they have managed to create and improve BItwig without running any test, then I am very impressed.

Excuse me? As a registered OS X developer you have access to all the latest beta versions of the operating system and you should (!) of course (!!) prepare your commercial (!!!) application to be compatible with what is going to be the technical platform. Especially as an OS X developer you should know that, because Apple has a pretty good track record of getting their users to updating to the latest OS all the time – compared to the rest of the market.

This article was about Bitwig 1.1. As far as I am aware I have not read about problems with Yosemite and Bitwig, since this latest update. So any mention of problems between Yosemite and Bitwig are pretty ridiculous given that these have been fixed,

Guest

Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to get access to the latest (open..) JDK from Oracle. Their fault! Especially when then providing JDK 6.. That is AGES OLD, was manufactured by a wholly different company! WTF, Apple?!

I was entusiast when Bigwig was released. I spent the night testing and it was a _blast_ ; then I too realised that it is written in Java. Never used it again. Yesterday I’ve installed 1.1 but I haven’t got a chance to use it.

Bitwig is quite impressive IMHO, but man… Java…

lodsb

lelz…. sorry. the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). imho that’s one of the smartest moves you can do in a world that is practically dominated by java development (tools, toolchains, libs). if you are interested in the topic you can read the 3 part series: http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/10-reasons-why-java-now-rocks-more-than-ever-part-1-the-java-compiler/
i know it is biased on the other hand, but it also makes clear why going “native” for certain parts of an app is just a bad decision in many ways. if you are angry that java is annoying to install on your mac… well… you know apple. if you chose a tools based on the dev language, I’d call that a fetish 😉

I won’t say, I’d choose a tool based on the programming language. If I would do so, how should I decide whether to buy a Moog Sub Phatty or a DSI Pro 2? Because, they have been programmed in some language to do the things they do beyond the “analog” parts that actually produce the sound.

But I choose to reject a piece of software when it builds (and even only partly) upon a platform that is proven to be a significant security risk to my main music making tool – the computer.

Having said that, I am absolutely aware that I don’t know what security risks any “native” software might bring when installing it. But in fairness, how often have we heard of Live, Logic or Cubase causing severe security issues on Windows or OS X – as compared to Flash or Java?

lodsb

i dont follow. how are issues related to applications that you download, trust and run to security issues that have been reported to affect signing code from webstart/applets/webservices? i mean sure, you can set the browser to run any java applet etc but on a local app?

simzy

My good friend, Ho, works for the Macquarie Bank in Sydney, which is worth billions, a huge organization, and they use Java (keep in mind that they are dealing with very important bank data etc.). Also, I read some good articles recently about how Ruby and Python do not work very well for extremely large web applications, that big companies all switched to Java once their projects became large.
Remember, Java is owned by Oracle, who has billions of dollars and genius programmers. I’m not sure if the latest Java would really threaten your system; they release updates after all.
I really do think Java will make a comeback eventually and be the future. It’s so logical coding once and having it run on each system because of a virtual machine.
And don’t forget, Flash had ActionScript, HTML 5/Javascript is a step backwards… we lost so much getting rid of Flah. It would have been great if companies just gave Java or Flash moral support and bug reports/advice. It’s not like Adobe or Oracle can’t afford to fix them. OR opensourcing them. Flash should have become opensourced I think, and then natively implemented.

I highly doubt that the Java language would be the future, even though I’ve been using it professionally for 8 years. However, the JVM itself is great and supports lots of new and promising languages. Still, “write once, run everywhere” is a bit of a marketing spiel and is not always true, at least in my experience.

Tom Ritchford

Sigh. There is nothing inherently unsafe about a Java *desktop program*. The Flash and Java attacks come from untrusted applets running in a web browser. If you allowed untrusted C++ programs to run in your web browser, you’d have even more problems than running Flash or Java

I haven’t written Java in years and have no axe to grind, but please don’t go spreading misinformation.

Mo Jo

I think you are comparing apples with cardboard boxes, when you mention security issues. Bitwig is no less secure than any other software that runs natively or makes use of a virtual machine.

Personally I don’t like Java on my machine either , but that is because of the endless updates to the JRE. Bitwig uses it as an embedded program so you don’t even get those. Frankly, without exploring or reading about it, you just wouldn’t know the GUI was Java based.

as a System Administrator that knows his way into programming + musician and sound designer, I have my good reason to dislike such a choice. It’s not just a whim about “oh my god java on my shiny mac”.

foljs

“”” the audio engine is c++. the gui framework uses cairo for rendering. the rest runs on the jvm (could be java/scala/…). “””

So a bunch of mismatched technologies, instead of a unified architecture, and probably using Java’s horrible FFI to talk to the C/C++ code. And the addition of a GC to their product for no good reason.

Yeah, sure sounds competent.

lodsb

you do realize that any decent DAW uses IPC for the different parts (audio/plugin/mainapp), yes? and that jni to c++ (for cairo) can be done in a fairly efficient way (drawing will be the main bottleneck, in general, which is done in native code). so in essence it does not matter. we can argue about the GC being a *possible* cause for performance issues, in general – albeit you can also profile in the java world and get rid of excessive mallocs. if you are so unhappy with java “as a computerscientist and programmer”, well, that’s your *opinion*. but discrediting dev efforts based on this is just … trivial trolling.

LLCoolJeans

You just said it worked great. Why does it matter if it is partially written in Java?

kudd

You meet a beautiful and smart girl and then you find out she has syphilis

Dave

More like, you meet a beautiful girl and find out she is Italian. You just hate Italian chicks. Always talking about their mothers, and they blow up after the first kid. etc.

That said, some people just don’t like Italian chicks. Ain’t worth getting all upset about it. Plenty of other chicks. Me? I adore Ukrainian chicks.

So you try out this new guitar, it plays fantastic, it sounds fantastic, the price is right, it looks gorgeous and then you ditch it because it is made partially out of a kind of wood you once heard on the interwebs isn’t good for guitars?

Wow.

Mo Jo

goddammit … its that spruce again 😉

foljs

Well, no, some of us are actually computer scientists and programmers and know what we’re talking about, not just distrust Java for the BitWig because we read something in the internet.

Elekb

What happened with some of these folks, apparently, is they tried a new guitar, it plays, sounds and looks OK, but the type of internal circuitry used to build this guitar is shoddy and has been proven to break down at short notice (i.e., a pickup unexpectedly dies, for instance, or the volume knobs don’t work properly and make funny noises). I actually had this happen to me in the real world.
So you either return it and try another guitar, or you try to have the circuit fixed (= wait for a new, more stable version of the software to come out).

Personally, I’ve had problems with Java-based apps in the past (including crashes, stability and slowness) and I don’t need to be a programmer to know that there are issues

As a live musician, I don’t really care how good Bitwig sounds – if I suspect that it is not stable, I will NOT use it in a professional setting, regardless of how good Bitwig’s features may be. I’m sure they’ll figure something out for the next version. I held on to Ableton 7 for a full year after v8 came out for this very reason, and I only updated after testing and making sure the shitstorm was over.

So no, I don’t think these comments we just read are based simply on “something you just read on the interwebs”. Moving on.

Raffa van der Koont

I’ve had problems with programs that have been compiled from C and C++. Would you suggest that I don’t install those on my machine?

foljs

No, because those are problems based on bugs etc (which are unavoidable), where he was talking about problems based on the fundamendal design and capabilities of the language (not to mention that it’s a single-vendor proprietary affair).

Besides BitWig also uses C/C++ as does all other pro DAWs, can’t realistically escape it for multi-channel audio work. Java, you can (and probably should).

Ewan Jeffries

Have you actually run Bitwig to see if there are any problems?

CircleJerkProducer

So basically you’re saying you tested the software, it runs great, it’s inspiring you to write music, it’s fun to use, but once you’ve discovered it was written in Java you decided it was shit.

Jesus christ. Thanks for reminding me why I’ve stopped going to music production forums/websites. Time to do it again.

Raffa van der Koont

You can’t be running that java thing, because you may find out one day that its taken over your home, cleared out your bank account and slept with your wife. What use is creativity then ?

No I can’t and I don’t believe I have to, because I don’t believe I have to explain to everyone why I like or dislike a certain concept or execution. And I am happy to risk losing credibility and receiving downvotes for that.

You certainly don’t have to explain why you don’t like Java, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I’m sure the Bitwig guys evaluated their options, and had good reasons for going with Java. Whether this was a mistake or not remains to be seen.

foljs

Well, I for one, and at least another person in this comment section, uninstalled it promptly as soon as we discovered the Java dependency.

And I really could use a modern looking Ableton alternative.

foljs

For one, the Java dependency. Modern desktop OSes don’t bundle Java anymore, and the users shouldn’t need to install it to use a DAW (or have the JDK installed by the DAW).

Second, security issues. Java (also on the Desktop, not just in applet form) has had several exploits in the past years. Check Oracle’s support pages for that.

Third, indicates a bad choice of a technical stack, and perhaps a bad architecture for their app. Java is not particularly apt for the role they chose it for. And even if it was, doubling the languages and technology stacks on your program is a recipe for bugs, leaky abstractions and errors.

Fourth, Java’s performance is not up to par with C/C++ code. This can be problematic in a modern DAW GUI, where tons of things have to be updated in real time, and it often can look more like a video game that a static application. Add Retina/Hi-DPI support strain to that (that BitWig still doesn’t have).

I don’t necessarily agree with condemning the choice of Java so strongly, but thanks for sharing your reasons for doing so.

In addition to the audio engine written in C++, Ableton Live also uses Python under the hood. What is your stance on that?

PaulDavisTheFirst

Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. I’m not endorsing the specific decision to use Java but as lead developer of a cross-platform DAW that runs on Linux, OS X and Windows (unreleased), I certainly understand their motivation.

Clearly I do have an idea about that. I am product owner in a software development team, and I appreciate every day that we don’t have to support more than one OS. But that doesn’t change my opinion about using Java.

I have noticed more than once how Live actually runs/ran on custom made objects instead of standard OS objects (file open dialog, max/minimise buttons on title bars to name just a few), and that is probably to make developers’ lives easier. Live’s late transition to OSX Retina support is another one… But again, that doesn’t mean that using Java is a good idea.

PaulDavisTheFirst

If you don’t actually support more than 1 OS, then I still suspect you don’t fully get how complex cross-platform GUIs can be.

Live uses GL as the baseline; Bitwig chose to use Java for the GUI (not the internals). I could defend either choice, even though in real life I use neither (Ardour uses GTK on all platforms). I don’t see any obvious downside to using Java for this purpose – it is a very very different scenario than when using it as a plugin inside a browser, and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.

That’s alright, but please don’t just make assumptions based on such little detail information. I do have an idea of the complexity of the matter. Just because I don’t have to deal with it in my current job doesn’t nean I don’t know what I’m talking about.

foljs

“””and performance issues with the GUI are essentially non-existant.”””

For a modern DAW GUI that has to update tons of indicators and live spectograms and waveforms and sliders and what have you dynamically? And soon, for 5K iMac displays?

foljs

“””Clearly you have no idea whatsoever how hard building cross-platform “native” GUIs actually is. “””

Well, I have a (professional) idea.

First, most companies, from Mozilla to Ableton to Propellerheads to Steinberg, to ImageLine (for their OS X plugins) have been able to do it.

Second, using Java hardly makes it any easier. It’s not like they used Swing or some ready made Java cross-platform UI layer.

It’s just a bad technical choice.

PaulDavisTheFirst

2 platforms might seem like you’ve already gotten 2/3rds of the way to three. But actually, you’re barely 1/2 way. Mozilla is the only one of the above examples that actually runs on 3 platforms (or more), and is the only one that uses an existing cross-platform-ish GUI toolkit. The rest do Windows and OS X only. I have no idea if Imageline even use the same GUI technology for their Windows and their OS X plugins – I know plugin developers who use native toolkits on each platform and others who use stuff like Qt.

I don’t know the reasons why Bitwig chose to use Java. I just think that it is defensible, especially if you want to include Linux in your supported platform list, and even more so if for some reason you don’t want to use GTK+ or Qt, and even more so if you don’t want to be tracking down pointer and memory allocation problems.

foljs

Well, it’s not like Linux support will do them any good. They might get 100 users to buy their software. I doubt they’ll get 200. Besides, with the scarcity of other audio tools for Linux (and the presence of one or two ho-hum, semi-abandoned projects for every audio need doesn’t really counter this scarcity), it’s not like it’s a very viable platform for audio work.

“””The rest do Windows and OS X only.”””

Well, if you already do Windows and OS X it’s not that hard to go to a third platform. I’d say it’s mostly indiference for the tiny (and not that used to paying for software, some hardcore Linux advocates even believe proprietary software must end) user base, estimated for the desktop at around 1/10 of OS X or less.

That said Linux also historically lacks in other ways (base audio drivers etc), which make it more difficult, and for which Java doesn’t help — of course you know all these problems far better than me, and are probably more optimistic about their solution.

(I used to follow stuff like Ardour and Rosegarden back in the day, hoping desktop Linux will do the jump).

Dave

Yes! that’s it! They are too damn lazy. After all starting a software company is a pretty lazy activity. And these lazeballs who just built this beautiful piece of software, can’t even build a native UI.

I’m a lazy musician myself, but I find myself with 200 dollars and I am looking for a native UI for one or more operating systems. I don’t think Bitwig is for me.

Maybe I’ll just get something that can create music with this mess of loops and vsts that I got at home…

BitWig asks users to keep an unsupported, not working on later OSes, and with no security updates version of Java.

Of course, they shouldn’t depend on Java for a desktop audio app in the first place, but that’s another mistake BitWig made.

Mo Jo

Well, Bitwig was using Java before Apple released Yosemite, without any problems. Yosemite comes along and things don’t work. How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.

Secondly, I run a on Windows and Linux and it looks like Bitwig 1.1 is running Java SE 8 with update 20. I hardly call that unsupported.

Thirdly, Java is perfectly suited as a virtual machine, to provide cross platform GUI support. For a small team, it makes sense of using already existing frameworks, that are less critical to the app, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

foljs

“””How can you expect a team to test for a future version of OS. .. that’s quite unreasonable.”””

Actually that’s very reasonable. That’s what beta and early access of OS versions are, and that’s what any competent developer team is supposed to do, test with the yet unreleased OS version.

The hard part of cross platform GUI support is not having a “virtual machine” for it. That’s not even relevant to the problem. It’s not like they are using Swing or anything, either…

Mo Jo

I am sure they do test. Though you must remember Yosemite is currently at beta stage and not currently for general release. As such you do get teething problems, it is to be expected from a beta OS. What you do see from Bitwig is their determination and speed in fixing issues that come up.

“currently at beta stage”? Have you been living under a rock recently? Yosemite has been released to public on 16 October.

Mo Jo

Indeed you are correct, though I don’t live under a rock. I just don’t follow Apples release dates as its of no interest to me.

Nord

How can you be sure they do test?

Mo Jo

I can’t and neither do I care Product testing is an ever evolving process, very much like the product. Tests are prone to errors as much as any other piece of software. Sometimes things get missed. so you improve your tests and move on. . On the whole, I have not experienced many issues. Those I have had, have been dealt with rather quickly.So, if they have managed to create and improve BItwig without running any test, then I am very impressed.

Excuse me? As a registered OS X developer you have access to all the latest beta versions of the operating system and you should (!) of course (!!) prepare your commercial (!!!) application to be compatible with what is going to be the technical platform. Especially as an OS X developer you should know that, because Apple has a pretty good track record of getting their users to updating to the latest OS all the time – compared to the rest of the market.

This article was about Bitwig 1.1. As far as I am aware I have not read about problems with Yosemite and Bitwig, since this latest update. So any mention of problems between Yosemite and Bitwig are pretty ridiculous given that these have been fixed,

Guest

Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to get access to the latest (open..) JDK from Oracle. Their fault! Especially when then providing JDK 6.. That is AGES OLD, was manufactured by a wholly different company! WTF, Apple?!

No, that’s a misleading message by Yosemite itself, Bitwig does not rely on having Java 6 installs, it brings its own JRE.

wetterberg

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.” – the workflow is more… playful than Live’s, in my opinion. I’m sure that’s valuable to a lot of musicians, after all.

WigWearer

you said it, more fun, more creative, encourages creativity even !

wetterberg

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.” – the workflow is more… playful than Live’s, in my opinion. I’m sure that’s valuable to a lot of musicians, after all.

WigWearer

you said it, more fun, more creative, encourages creativity even !

wetterberg

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.” – the workflow is more… playful than Live’s, in my opinion. I’m sure that’s valuable to a lot of musicians, after all.

WigWearer

you said it, more fun, more creative, encourages creativity even !

John Goik

Bitwig is dope, even if its written in Java, the Linux support is not trivial. Come join us in a beautiful place out in the country.

Being able to load the native midi devices and VST midi plugins in one track, rather then routing across several tracks (or using a 3rd party VSTmodular host) was a huge yippee for me.

The modulation system is lovely.
LIve requires m4l to do the same in a less elegant and less flexible manner.

Other than offering similar clip features it doesn feel like LIve, Sonar can do it too but no one complains its like Live.

I havent even touched the clip for creative use yet but always used them in Live

Bitwig and Live feel completely different. Bitwig development and addition of features is blistering compared to LIve.
Its ahead of where LIve was at v4

WigWearer

Being able to load the native midi devices and VST midi plugins in one track, rather then routing across several tracks (or using a 3rd party VSTmodular host) was a huge yippee for me.

The modulation system is lovely.
LIve requires m4l to do the same in a less elegant and less flexible manner.

Other than offering similar clip features it doesn feel like LIve, Sonar can do it too but no one complains its like Live.

I havent even touched the clip for creative use yet but always used them in Live

Bitwig and Live feel completely different. Bitwig development and addition of features is blistering compared to LIve.
Its ahead of where LIve was at v4

WigWearer

Being able to load the native midi devices and VST midi plugins in one track, rather then routing across several tracks (or using a 3rd party VSTmodular host) was a huge yippee for me.

The modulation system is lovely.
LIve requires m4l to do the same in a less elegant and less flexible manner.

Other than offering similar clip features it doesn feel like LIve, Sonar can do it too but no one complains its like Live.

I havent even touched the clip for creative use yet but always used them in Live

Bitwig and Live feel completely different. Bitwig development and addition of features is blistering compared to LIve.
Its ahead of where LIve was at v4

newmiracle

I’m not entirely familiar with Bitwig’s controller support and programming.

Can anyone outline how much better it actually is than Live’s? In what ways is it better? Does Bitwig’s equivalent of “the red box” work easier? Or with more devices? What else is exposed in the API that isn’t in Live?

I’m trying to get more creative in terms of my controllers, so this could be a killer feature for me. Feel free to speak programmer speak and get techie on it.

Evan Bogunia

The main (and best) difference is that it is totally open, documented and supported. All of the classes and methods are freely available and very well explained in their online documentation. The scripts that come with the Bitwig package are available for you to look at and take hints from, unlike Live’s, which are compiled .pyc files. Also the community is very helpful, productive and enthusiastic.

That being said, I still use Live because I can code my own audio tools AND customize controllers. It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….

ElectroB

“It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….” And that exactly is one of Bitwig’s biggest issues: long time users of Live such as yourself (and myself) have little incentive to change platforms: because we’ve invested so much of our resources and time to Live + Bitwig does pretty much the same things as Live. Bitwig will survive if it attracts enough new users, but I don’t think it will be “stealing” customers from Ableton anytime soon.

Freeks

Bitwig does NEW things that live does not. New things can create new ideas.

For me the lack of comping tool is only reason why i have to use Logic and if bigwig does it before Live they will win my money. I’m a long time logic and live user, but i don’t think switching platform is a problem. All programs are more or less same so one can learn it in a day. Sure i have loads of custom live racks, but so what. Creating new racks in Bitwig is welcomed house cleaning 😉

Evan Bogunia

‘All programs are more or less the same’
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. Logic, when compared to Live and Bitwig, has a totally different design philosophy and approach to creating and performing music (emphasis on performing in my case). Learning a new creative environment in a day is a gross overstatement in my opinion.

I wasn’t referring to racks when I said hand made tools. I love creating/modifying racks as much as the next guy, but I am talking about hand coded audio and control tools built in Max (and javascript, and Gen, and python). I don’t think Bitwig has an integrated environment for creating sample based audio processes yet. THAT’s what I miss when going to any other production environment other than Live.

Derick

I don’t think it’s totally fair to write a review with focussing mainly on a comparison with software which already on the market for years (Live).

The author seems to think that there is no place for both applications, or that a new one threatens the development of the other. Review Bitwig in itself first and then do some comparison.

I can imagine that if you use Ableton, you are trying to do Ableton-things and don’t see how new ‘Bitwig things’ are useful.

Anyway, is the price reasonable for software lacking some features? It works on Linux, but doesn’t support Linux native plugins (yet)? It doesn’t support OSC. How is the stability? That’s the sort of information I like to know.

Jack

It’s not ready for prime time yet. Don’t know when that will happen.

Fred

Dunno, ask Ableton

newmiracle

I’m not entirely familiar with Bitwig’s controller support and programming.

Can anyone outline how much better it actually is than Live’s? In what ways is it better? Does Bitwig’s equivalent of “the red box” work easier? Or with more devices? What else is exposed in the API that isn’t in Live?

I’m trying to get more creative in terms of my controllers, so this could be a killer feature for me. Feel free to speak programmer speak and get techie on it.

Evan Bogunia

The main (and best) difference is that it is totally open, documented and supported. All of the classes and methods are freely available and very well explained in their online documentation. The scripts that come with the Bitwig package are available for you to look at and take hints from, unlike Live’s, which are compiled .pyc files. Also the community is very helpful, productive and enthusiastic.

That being said, I still use Live because I can code my own audio tools AND customize controllers. It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….

ElectroB

“It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….” And that exactly is one of Bitwig’s biggest issues: long time users of Live such as yourself (and myself) have little incentive to change platforms: because we’ve invested so much of our resources and time to Live + Bitwig does pretty much the same things as Live. Bitwig will survive if it attracts enough new users, but I don’t think it will be “stealing” customers from Ableton anytime soon.

Freeks

Bitwig does NEW things that live does not. New things can create new ideas.

For me the lack of comping tool is only reason why i have to use Logic and if bigwig does it before Live they will win my money. I’m a long time logic and live user, but i don’t think switching platform is a problem. All programs are more or less same so one can learn it in a day. Sure i have loads of custom live racks, but so what. Creating new racks in Bitwig is welcomed house cleaning 😉

Evan Bogunia

‘All programs are more or less the same’
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. Logic, when compared to Live and Bitwig, has a totally different design philosophy and approach to creating and performing music (emphasis on performing in my case). Learning a new creative environment in a day is a gross overstatement in my opinion.

I wasn’t referring to racks when I said hand made tools. I love creating/modifying racks as much as the next guy, but I am talking about hand coded audio and control tools built in Max (and javascript, and Gen, and python). I don’t think Bitwig has an integrated environment for creating sample based audio processes yet. THAT’s what I miss when going to any other production environment other than Live.

Derick

I don’t think it’s totally fair to write a review with focussing mainly on a comparison with software which already on the market for years (Live).

The author seems to think that there is no place for both applications, or that a new one threatens the development of the other. Review Bitwig in itself first and then do some comparison.

I can imagine that if you use Ableton, you are trying to do Ableton-things and don’t see how new ‘Bitwig things’ are useful.

Anyway, is the price reasonable for software lacking some features? It works on Linux, but doesn’t support Linux native plugins (yet)? It doesn’t support OSC. How is the stability? That’s the sort of information I like to know.

Jack

It’s not ready for prime time yet. Don’t know when that will happen.

Fred

Dunno, ask Ableton

newmiracle

I’m not entirely familiar with Bitwig’s controller support and programming.

Can anyone outline how much better it actually is than Live’s? In what ways is it better? Does Bitwig’s equivalent of “the red box” work easier? Or with more devices? What else is exposed in the API that isn’t in Live?

I’m trying to get more creative in terms of my controllers, so this could be a killer feature for me. Feel free to speak programmer speak and get techie on it.

Evan Bogunia

The main (and best) difference is that it is totally open, documented and supported. All of the classes and methods are freely available and very well explained in their online documentation. The scripts that come with the Bitwig package are available for you to look at and take hints from, unlike Live’s, which are compiled .pyc files. Also the community is very helpful, productive and enthusiastic.

That being said, I still use Live because I can code my own audio tools AND customize controllers. It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….

Elekb

“It’s hard to leave behind hand made tools that I’ve spent so many hours on….” And that exactly is one of Bitwig’s biggest issues: long time users of Live such as yourself (and myself) have little incentive to change platforms: because we’ve invested so much of our resources and time to Live + Bitwig does pretty much the same things as Live. Bitwig will survive if it attracts enough new users, but I don’t think it will be “stealing” customers from Ableton anytime soon.

Freeks

Bitwig does NEW things that live does not. New things can create new ideas.

For me the lack of comping tool is only reason why i have to use Logic and if bigwig does it before Live they will win my money. I’m a long time logic and live user, but i don’t think switching platform is a problem. All programs are more or less same so one can learn it in a day. Sure i have loads of custom live racks, but so what. Creating new racks in Bitwig is welcomed house cleaning 😉

Evan Bogunia

‘All programs are more or less the same’
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. Logic, when compared to Live and Bitwig, has a totally different design philosophy and approach to creating and performing music (emphasis on performing in my case). Learning a new creative environment in a day is a gross overstatement in my opinion.

I wasn’t referring to racks when I said hand made tools. I love creating/modifying racks as much as the next guy, but I am talking about hand coded audio and control tools built in Max (and javascript, and Gen, and python). I don’t think Bitwig has an integrated environment for creating sample based audio processes yet. THAT’s what I miss when going to any other production environment other than Live.

Derick

I don’t think it’s totally fair to write a review with focussing mainly on a comparison with software which already on the market for years (Live).

The author seems to think that there is no place for both applications, or that a new one threatens the development of the other. Review Bitwig in itself first and then do some comparison.

I can imagine that if you use Ableton, you are trying to do Ableton-things and don’t see how new ‘Bitwig things’ are useful.

Anyway, is the price reasonable for software lacking some features? It works on Linux, but doesn’t support Linux native plugins (yet)? It doesn’t support OSC. How is the stability? That’s the sort of information I like to know.

Jack

It’s not ready for prime time yet. Don’t know when that will happen.

Fred

Dunno, ask Ableton

David

It handles crashes much more intelligently and less disruptively than live. Now that max7 runs m4L devices I haven’t touched Live anymore. No more ‘live browser’ either.

Still hanging on to live, but Bitwig is a less bloated, distraction free canvas. 11 gigs of ‘content’ is just buzzwords.

HansMono

Not to mention things like Plugin-sandboxing wich in my opinion is a huge plus for live-use and soundstability.. Guest what, if one of Ur Plugins Crash u still have the remaining Arrangement in full effect.

David

It handles crashes much more intelligently and less disruptively than live. Now that max7 runs m4L devices I haven’t touched Live anymore. No more ‘live browser’ either.

Still hanging on to live, but Bitwig is a less bloated, distraction free canvas. 11 gigs of ‘content’ is just buzzwords.

HansMono

Not to mention things like Plugin-sandboxing wich in my opinion is a huge plus for live-use and soundstability.. Guest what, if one of Ur Plugins Crash u still have the remaining Arrangement in full effect.

David

It handles crashes much more intelligently and less disruptively than live. Now that max7 runs m4L devices I haven’t touched Live anymore. No more ‘live browser’ either.

Still hanging on to live, but Bitwig is a less bloated, distraction free canvas. 11 gigs of ‘content’ is just buzzwords.

HansMono

Not to mention things like Plugin-sandboxing wich in my opinion is a huge plus for live-use and soundstability.. Guest what, if one of Ur Plugins Crash u still have the remaining Arrangement in full effect.

Dylan

“Genuinely deactivate devices, something Live lacks” can someone explain further. I have a maxforlive device called lesupermute that I thought was taking care of this.

lodsb

it means it not only bypasses the device but also removes it from the processing chain freeing up cpu.

Z Wolf

Could someone elaborate even MORE on this? 🙂
I’m confused, I thought bypassing devices in Ableton did free up CPU. This is an important issue for me because my band uses a very CPU-intensive live rig.

Ralph

No, it doesn’t. Advantage is that when the muted track/device plays silently in the background, you could enable it anytime (not only beat-synced) and have the “real deal” including FX. I agree, Ableton should have an option to change this behaviour as desired, so e.g. muted tracks don’t play at all, and un-muting will make them “start from scratch”.

Dylan

“Genuinely deactivate devices, something Live lacks” can someone explain further. I have a maxforlive device called lesupermute that I thought was taking care of this.

lodsb

it means it not only bypasses the device but also removes it from the processing chain freeing up cpu.

Z Wolf

Could someone elaborate even MORE on this? 🙂
I’m confused, I thought bypassing devices in Ableton did free up CPU. This is an important issue for me because my band uses a very CPU-intensive live rig.

Ralph

No, it doesn’t. Advantage is that when the muted track/device plays silently in the background, you could enable it anytime (not only beat-synced) and have the “real deal” including FX. I agree, Ableton should have an option to change this behaviour as desired, so e.g. muted tracks don’t play at all, and un-muting will make them “start from scratch”.

Dylan

“Genuinely deactivate devices, something Live lacks” can someone explain further. I have a maxforlive device called lesupermute that I thought was taking care of this.

lodsb

it means it not only bypasses the device but also removes it from the processing chain freeing up cpu.

Z Wolf

Could someone elaborate even MORE on this? 🙂
I’m confused, I thought bypassing devices in Ableton did free up CPU. This is an important issue for me because my band uses a very CPU-intensive live rig.

Ralph

No, it doesn’t. Advantage is that when the muted track/device plays silently in the background, you could enable it anytime (not only beat-synced) and have the “real deal” including FX. I agree, Ableton should have an option to change this behaviour as desired, so e.g. muted tracks don’t play at all, and un-muting will make them “start from scratch”.

Nice1

I deleted the Bigwig demo because it was missing some of these features. glad it got updated.

still one reason I probably will never leave ableton- max for live.

Nice1

I deleted the Bigwig demo because it was missing some of these features. glad it got updated.

still one reason I probably will never leave ableton- max for live.

Nice1

I deleted the Bigwig demo because it was missing some of these features. glad it got updated.

still one reason I probably will never leave ableton- max for live.

John Mark

Furthermore as we’ve tangled as of late with Ableton Live’s spotty controller help and the abnormal acrobatic needed to make controllers work, its value chastening Ableton for not greatly improving the situation. http://songlyricssearch.net/ Bitwig, with a bit of the improvement assets and almost no motivator for equipment producers to include backing, is rapidly including controller help just in light of the fact that its simpler to do.

John Mark

Furthermore as we’ve tangled as of late with Ableton Live’s spotty controller help and the abnormal acrobatic needed to make controllers work, its value chastening Ableton for not greatly improving the situation. http://songlyricssearch.net/ Bitwig, with a bit of the improvement assets and almost no motivator for equipment producers to include backing, is rapidly including controller help just in light of the fact that its simpler to do.

John Mark

Furthermore as we’ve tangled as of late with Ableton Live’s spotty controller help and the abnormal acrobatic needed to make controllers work, its value chastening Ableton for not greatly improving the situation. http://songlyricssearch.net/ Bitwig, with a bit of the improvement assets and almost no motivator for equipment producers to include backing, is rapidly including controller help just in light of the fact that its simpler to do.

Tekknovator

I got it because of linux support, working on a renoise live setup in a netbook with controllers. I thought it would be nice to have an alternative. Still dabbling though… Outside of linux I do not see much use for it. Main DAW is Cubase and Mainstage over jack/IAC for audio units. Bitwig has neither AU nor VST3 support which leaves me without superb Groove Agent 4 and sounddesign monster Halion 5.

Tekknovator

I got it because of linux support, working on a renoise live setup in a netbook with controllers. I thought it would be nice to have an alternative. Still dabbling though… Outside of linux I do not see much use for it. Main DAW is Cubase and Mainstage over jack/IAC for audio units. Bitwig has neither AU nor VST3 support which leaves me without superb Groove Agent 4 and sounddesign monster Halion 5.

Tekknovator

I got it because of linux support, working on a renoise live setup in a netbook with controllers. I thought it would be nice to have an alternative. Still dabbling though… Outside of linux I do not see much use for it. Main DAW is Cubase and Mainstage over jack/IAC for audio units. Bitwig has neither AU nor VST3 support which leaves me without superb Groove Agent 4 and sounddesign monster Halion 5.

Freeks

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.”

That’s rather harsh. If new user sees videos of Bitwigs new features and Llive’s new features, Bitwig looks a lot better. Sure it misses still things but most are something that new users don’t need.

As a long time live user i have been very disappointed on Ableton. Great for some that they bring our stuff like Push. It’s bad for rest of us as it eats resources from Live development. We still need to play with IAC if we want to trigger scene from clip. We need dummy clips. It has 2 monitor setup… great if it would be 2005. 2014 most use one big screen.

It’s great that one can finally record automation to the clips. It took 9 versions but it’s here. Bitwig is still behind of Live in features, but with current pace Bitwig 2 might be ahead Live 10. I have zero expetations for Live 10. I only hope that they fix the browser. I would love to see development on clip launching. It has not been touched in 10 years or so.

I get feeling that ableton has “outsourced” development of Live to M4L developers. I don’t like to use M4L much as it makes live unstable and it’s very un elegant way to do simple things.

Jay

Yo can judge a product from what you see in the videos. Bitwig has been teasing with their videos non-stop and then released a beta which was an insulting piece of crap that didn’t even recognize your audio card! Use the software and see it in reality.

Freeks

Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works. No problem with any of my audio cards, but i’m on Mac.

foljs

“””Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works.”””

Yeah, not for professional musicians…

Raffa van der Koont

So why do you care?

jay

Yes, products are sold by advertising videos but serious companies offer products that work as advertised. Not the case of Bitwig.

The DAW market is a very competitive one. If you are lucky enough to have the buzz Bitwig had, you better be careful and try to get the best out of it, you have one chance to make an good impression, they say.

Bitwig released an unfinished half-backed product advertised as complete. Woudn’t have been better for them to wait and release when is finished? And I’m not saying here the software shouldn’t have any bugs, if you announce a feature, it has to work 100%, not 60%.

This can only backfire and make a very bad impression (you buy into the hype and find out the product is broken, after you have paid for a beta version). That’s why I don’t see any serious producers using the software, only a bunch of kids making trance songs.

Bottom line is, only someone with no idea of music software could have bought Bitwig at its release state. If Bitwig survives, it will be only because of those noobs, IMHO.

Nicholas Allen

It sounds like you had a very bad experience with Bitwig. I can tell you that it is hard to get software to work with every single persons setup and hardware combinations. However, this is not a problem that many of our user experience. If you still have problems with you hardware please let us know – we would love to fix it!

ryan

Were you around for Live 8?
Talk about a buggy piece of software and that was version 8.

Gentlemen

Yes, the astronomical amount of unfixed bugs the Bitwig nice guys left them shortly before the release of Live 8. And the astronomical amount of bugs on the release of the “full” version of Bitwig. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?

Guest

that four year live 8 to 9 gap makes me wonder who really had the brains at ableton seeing how far bitwig has come in such a short time.

Version 1.0 is always the easiest version to develop. I’m neither criticizing the effort at Bitwig nor praising or excusing the one at Ableton, but this is a pattern I think lots of developers have seen again and again. It’s why some devs do choose to reboot a codebase rather than try to build on top of it.

Nicholas Allen

We could never have achieved our visions at Ableton and that is why we left – nothing to do with wanting to start over.

Johnny

Short time? They started in 2009. That’s almost 6 years. Doesn’t look like a short time at all.

H_Katz

don’t get me started on the bugs in live 8.0 and … THE BRIDGE.
disaster.

I don’t know if the folks are aware that a number of the Bitwig developers were responsible for the products you were complaining about – while they were at Ableton.

Dale Maily

I heard they actually left before Live 8 was released. Any suggestion that they were responsible for the failings of Live 8 is stupid. Sure Ableton lost developers, but Ableton still took the decision of releasing it.

Its quite typical of most of the negative comments here. Can’t really fault the product, so attack the developers or the the development software. What next… the color of the packaging isn’t correct for a DAW?

Chuck

Well, it’s true Ableton released anyway, but they are a big company and had everything planned I supposse. And suddenly four coders left them, fuck off Ableton, two months before the release, that had to hurt, development wise.

Nicholas Allen

That is simply not true. We had nothing to do with Bridge. Also we offered Ableton the opportunity to stay on and see out the Live 8 release. They wanted us to leave ASAP and didn’t take up the offer. So the statements in this thread in no way reflect the reality of what happenned.

Lido

A guy from Bitwig making comments about internal stuff that happened while in Ableton doesn’t look cool at all. It’s just your side of the story and can’t be proven. And also because there are people on these forums which have true insider information about what happened. Comments like this one only help to confirm you might be problematic group of people.

Ralph

Without going into lengthy details, I partly agree.
The Bitwig vs Live ranking is not that clear for me either, given that Live has tremendous horsepower under the hood, even without M4L, with many really high quality devices that look somewhat uninspiring but sound fantastic. Bitwig improves well upon several concepts, but for my workflow I couldn’t yet say that Bitwig really beats Live.
True, using M4L for simple things is not elegant, but what simple thing can’t be done with Live’s on-board tool chain, even M4L excluded?

lex

Bitwig will never beat Live. It doesn’t have the intelligence and conceptual thinking Live has behind. It just desperately grabs pieces of different applications, with no clear direction.

H_Katz

there’s room for everyone, and it’s easy to admit, definitely in some ways live has catching up to do.. I like seeing a small group finally put them in check after all these years. I’m surprised this review does not really acknowledge what bitwig has done as a solid newcomer.

but the interests in the article are clearly one-sided. I think we shouldn’t look at CDM as news, but rather an opinion blog. PK is entitled to believe what he wants, I just wish there was a little more balance.

bitwig should start sending cdm a paycheck. (hint-hint!)

ElectroB

Well, we don’t really know that. as far as I can tell, if Bitwig is stable enough it can potentially do the job as well as Live.
I think their main problems now are: correcting bugs (apparently there are some in this release), solving any issues that may have been created by Java (which has been known to affect performance in real-time audio applications) and picking up new users that are not entirely devoted to Live or that are just now starting to look for performance software.

Nicholas Allen

Our application is split into 2 processes. One that renders the GUI (written in Java) and the audio engine (written in C++). The audio engine runs in higher priority than the GUI process so it will preempt the GUI. Java’s short time eden garbage collection performs very well and actually makes allocating objects in Java faster than in C++. Development and debugging is also MUCH quicker and easier in Java.

Freeks

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.”

That’s rather harsh. If new user sees videos of Bitwigs new features and Llive’s new features, Bitwig looks a lot better. Sure it misses still things but most are something that new users don’t need.

As a long time live user i have been very disappointed on Ableton. Great for some that they bring our stuff like Push. It’s bad for rest of us as it eats resources from Live development. We still need to play with IAC if we want to trigger scene from clip. We need dummy clips. It has 2 monitor setup… great if it would be 2005. 2014 most use one big screen.

It’s great that one can finally record automation to the clips. It took 9 versions but it’s here. Bitwig is still behind of Live in features, but with current pace Bitwig 2 might be ahead Live 10. I have zero expetations for Live 10. I only hope that they fix the browser. I would love to see development on clip launching. It has not been touched in 10 years or so.

I get feeling that ableton has “outsourced” development of Live to M4L developers. I don’t like to use M4L much as it makes live unstable and it’s very un elegant way to do simple things.

Jay

Yo can judge a product from what you see in the videos. Bitwig has been teasing with their videos non-stop and then released a beta which was an insulting piece of crap that didn’t even recognize your audio card! Use the software and see it in reality.

Freeks

Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works. No problem with any of my audio cards, but i’m on Mac.

foljs

“””Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works.”””

Yeah, not for professional musicians…

Raffa van der Koont

So why do you care?

jay

Yes, products are sold by advertising videos but serious companies offer products that work as advertised. Not the case of Bitwig.

The DAW market is a very competitive one. If you are lucky enough to have the buzz Bitwig had, you better be careful and try to get the best out of it, you have one chance to make an good impression, they say.

Bitwig released an unfinished half-backed product advertised as complete. Woudn’t have been better for them to wait and release when is finished? And I’m not saying here the software shouldn’t have any bugs, if you announce a feature, it has to work 100%, not 60%.

This can only backfire and make a very bad impression (you buy into the hype and find out the product is broken, after you have paid for a beta version). That’s why I don’t see any serious producers using the software, only a bunch of kids making trance songs.

Bottom line is, only someone with no idea of music software could have bought Bitwig at its release state. If Bitwig survives, it will be only because of those noobs, IMHO.

Nicholas Allen

It sounds like you had a very bad experience with Bitwig. I can tell you that it is hard to get software to work with every single persons setup and hardware combinations. However, this is not a problem that many of our user experience. If you still have problems with you hardware please let us know – we would love to fix it!

ryan

Were you around for Live 8?
Talk about a buggy piece of software and that was version 8.

Gentlemen

Yes, the astronomical amount of unfixed bugs the Bitwig nice guys left them shortly before the release of Live 8. And the astronomical amount of bugs on the release of the “full” version of Bitwig. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?

Guest

that four year live 8 to 9 gap makes me wonder who really had the brains at ableton seeing how far bitwig has come in such a short time.

Version 1.0 is always the easiest version to develop. I’m neither criticizing the effort at Bitwig nor praising or excusing the one at Ableton, but this is a pattern I think lots of developers have seen again and again. It’s why some devs do choose to reboot a codebase rather than try to build on top of it.

Nicholas Allen

We could never have achieved our visions at Ableton and that is why we left – nothing to do with wanting to start over.

Johnny

Short time? They started in 2009. That’s almost 6 years. Doesn’t look like a short time at all.

H_Katz

don’t get me started on the bugs in live 8.0 and … THE BRIDGE.
disaster.

I don’t know if the folks are aware that a number of the Bitwig developers were responsible for the products you were complaining about – while they were at Ableton.

Dale Maily

I heard they actually left before Live 8 was released. Any suggestion that they were responsible for the failings of Live 8 is stupid. Sure Ableton lost developers, but Ableton still took the decision of releasing it.

Its quite typical of most of the negative comments here. Can’t really fault the product, so attack the developers or the the development software. What next… the color of the packaging isn’t correct for a DAW?

Chuck

Well, it’s true Ableton released anyway, but they are a big company and had everything planned I supposse. And suddenly four coders left them, fuck off Ableton, two months before the release, that had to hurt, development wise.

Nicholas Allen

That is simply not true. We had nothing to do with Bridge. Also we offered Ableton the opportunity to stay on and see out the Live 8 release. They wanted us to leave ASAP and didn’t take up the offer. So the statements in this thread in no way reflect the reality of what happenned.

Lido

A guy from Bitwig making comments about internal stuff that happened while in Ableton doesn’t look cool at all. It’s just your side of the story and can’t be proven. And also because there are people on these forums which have true insider information about what happened. Comments like this one only help to confirm you might be problematic group of people.

Ralph

Without going into lengthy details, I partly agree.
The Bitwig vs Live ranking is not that clear for me either, given that Live has tremendous horsepower under the hood, even without M4L, with many really high quality devices that look somewhat uninspiring but sound fantastic. Bitwig improves well upon several concepts, but for my workflow I couldn’t yet say that Bitwig really beats Live.
True, using M4L for simple things is not elegant, but what simple thing can’t be done with Live’s on-board tool chain, even M4L excluded?

lex

Bitwig will never beat Live. It doesn’t have the intelligence and conceptual thinking Live has behind. It just desperately grabs pieces of different applications, with no clear direction.

H_Katz

there’s room for everyone, and bitwig is doing fine by me.

ElectroB

We don’t really know that, *IF* Bitwig is stable enough it can potentially do the job as well as Live.
I think their main problems now are:
– correcting bugs (apparently there are some in this release – nothing scandalous, this stuff happens),
– solving any issues that may have been created by Java (which has been known to affect performance in real-time audio applications)
– picking up new users that are not entirely devoted to Live or that are just now starting to look for performance software.

As for grabbing pieces from other applications, well, you could argue that Logic is too similar to Cubase or Sonar, etc… Personally I think total originality shouldn’t be the focus of the discussion. Bitwig might not have an entirely original ideia, but they are surely implementing in their own way. There are some Live users or ex-users in this forum who are apparently dissatisfied with some of its features and they appear to find Bitwig a bit more refreshing. Competition can be healthy. Let’s see how it plays out.

Nicholas Allen

Our application is split into 2 processes. One that renders the GUI (written in Java) and the audio engine (written in C++). The audio engine runs in higher priority than the GUI process so it will preempt the GUI. Java’s short time eden garbage collection performs very well and actually makes allocating objects in Java faster than in C++. Development and debugging is also MUCH quicker and easier in Java.

Freeks

“The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.”

That’s rather harsh. If new user sees videos of Bitwigs new features and Llive’s new features, Bitwig looks a lot better. Sure it misses still things but most are something that new users don’t need.

As a long time live user i have been very disappointed on Ableton. Great for some that they bring our stuff like Push. It’s bad for rest of us as it eats resources from Live development. We still need to play with IAC if we want to trigger scene from clip. We need dummy clips. It has 2 monitor setup… great if it would be 2005. 2014 most use one big screen.

It’s great that one can finally record automation to the clips. It took 9 versions but it’s here. Bitwig is still behind of Live in features, but with current pace Bitwig 2 might be ahead Live 10. I have zero expetations for Live 10. I only hope that they fix the browser. I would love to see development on clip launching. It has not been touched in 10 years or so.

I get feeling that ableton has “outsourced” development of Live to M4L developers. I don’t like to use M4L much as it makes live unstable and it’s very un elegant way to do simple things.

Jay

Yo can judge a product from what you see in the videos. Bitwig has been teasing with their videos non-stop and then released a beta which was an insulting piece of crap that didn’t even recognize your audio card! Use the software and see it in reality.

Freeks

Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works. No problem with any of my audio cards, but i’m on Mac.

foljs

“””Products ARE sold by advertising videos. That’s how it works.”””

Yeah, not for professional musicians…

Raffa van der Koont

So why do you care?

jay

Yes, products are sold by advertising videos but serious companies offer products that work as advertised. Not the case of Bitwig.

The DAW market is a very competitive one. If you are lucky enough to have the buzz Bitwig had, you better be careful and try to get the best out of it, you have one chance to make an good impression, they say.

Bitwig released an unfinished half-backed product advertised as complete. Woudn’t have been better for them to wait and release when is finished? And I’m not saying here the software shouldn’t have any bugs, if you announce a feature, it has to work 100%, not 60%.

This can only backfire and make a very bad impression (you buy into the hype and find out the product is broken, after you have paid for a beta version). That’s why I don’t see any serious producers using the software, only a bunch of kids making trance songs.

Bottom line is, only someone with no idea of music software could have bought Bitwig at its release state. If Bitwig survives, it will be only because of those noobs, IMHO.

Nicholas Allen

It sounds like you had a very bad experience with Bitwig. I can tell you that it is hard to get software to work with every single persons setup and hardware combinations. However, this is not a problem that many of our user experience. If you still have problems with you hardware please let us know – we would love to fix it!

ryan

Were you around for Live 8?
Talk about a buggy piece of software and that was version 8.

Gentlemen

Yes, the astronomical amount of unfixed bugs the Bitwig nice guys left them shortly before the release of Live 8. And the astronomical amount of bugs on the release of the “full” version of Bitwig. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?

Guest

that four year live 8 to 9 gap makes me wonder who really had the brains at ableton seeing how far bitwig has come in such a short time.

Version 1.0 is always the easiest version to develop. I’m neither criticizing the effort at Bitwig nor praising or excusing the one at Ableton, but this is a pattern I think lots of developers have seen again and again. It’s why some devs do choose to reboot a codebase rather than try to build on top of it.

Nicholas Allen

We could never have achieved our visions at Ableton and that is why we left – nothing to do with wanting to start over.

Johnny

Short time? They started in 2009. That’s almost 6 years. Doesn’t look like a short time at all.

H_Katz

don’t get me started on the bugs in live 8.0 and … THE BRIDGE.
disaster.

I don’t know if the folks are aware that a number of the Bitwig developers were responsible for the products you were complaining about – while they were at Ableton.

Dale Maily

I heard they actually left before Live 8 was released. Any suggestion that they were responsible for the failings of Live 8 is stupid. Sure Ableton lost developers, but Ableton still took the decision of releasing it.

Its quite typical of most of the negative comments here. Can’t really fault the product, so attack the developers or the the development software. What next… the color of the packaging isn’t correct for a DAW?

Chuck

Well, it’s true Ableton released anyway, but they are a big company and had everything planned I supposse. And suddenly four coders left them, fuck off Ableton, two months before the release, that had to hurt, development wise.

Nicholas Allen

That is simply not true. We had nothing to do with Bridge. Also we offered Ableton the opportunity to stay on and see out the Live 8 release. They wanted us to leave ASAP and didn’t take up the offer. So the statements in this thread in no way reflect the reality of what happenned.

Lido

A guy from Bitwig making comments about internal stuff that happened while in Ableton doesn’t look cool at all. It’s just your side of the story and can’t be proven. And also because there are people on these forums which have true insider information about what happened. Comments like this one only help to confirm you might be problematic group of people.

Ralph

Without going into lengthy details, I partly agree.
The Bitwig vs Live ranking is not that clear for me either, given that Live has tremendous horsepower under the hood, even without M4L, with many really high quality devices that look somewhat uninspiring but sound fantastic. Bitwig improves well upon several concepts, but for my workflow I couldn’t yet say that Bitwig really beats Live.
True, using M4L for simple things is not elegant, but what simple thing can’t be done with Live’s on-board tool chain, even M4L excluded?

lex

Bitwig will never beat Live. It doesn’t have the intelligence and conceptual thinking Live has behind. It just desperately grabs pieces of different applications, with no clear direction.

H_Katz

there’s room for everyone, and bitwig is doing fine by me.

Elekb

We don’t really know that, *IF* Bitwig is stable enough it can potentially do the job as well as Live.
I think their main problems now are:
– correcting bugs (apparently there are some in this release – nothing scandalous, this stuff happens),
– solving any issues that may have been created by Java (which has been known to affect performance in real-time audio applications)
– picking up new users that are not entirely devoted to Live or that are just now starting to look for performance software.

As for grabbing pieces from other applications, well, you could argue that Logic is too similar to Cubase or Sonar, etc… Personally I think total originality shouldn’t be the focus of the discussion. Bitwig might not have an entirely original ideia, but they are surely implementing in their own way. There are some Live users or ex-users in this forum who are apparently dissatisfied with some of its features and they appear to find Bitwig a bit more refreshing. Competition can be healthy. Let’s see how it plays out.

Nicholas Allen

Our application is split into 2 processes. One that renders the GUI (written in Java) and the audio engine (written in C++). The audio engine runs in higher priority than the GUI process so it will preempt the GUI. Java’s short time eden garbage collection performs very well and actually makes allocating objects in Java faster than in C++. Development and debugging is also MUCH quicker and easier in Java.

no one has implemented the easiest, most useful feature… give me an mp3 to a cloud (phone) drive, so i can listen in the car. and no one has decent set management… how about a live show playlist? terrible oversight.

Freeks

Save to Dropbbox?
That’s how i do it with logic + iPhone. No MP3 export in Live 🙁

Liveshow playlist?
How would you use it?
I have played live for a decade with laptop and never needed one. Whole set is in one project file anyway.

This is how DAW developers should be thinking honestly.. They need to get in that Silicon Valley mindset and start building the future. Audio app development moves at a really slow pace compared to other things.

no one has implemented the easiest, most useful feature… give me an mp3 to a cloud (phone) drive, so i can listen in the car. and no one has decent set management… how about a live show playlist? terrible oversight.

Freeks

Save to Dropbbox?
That’s how i do it with logic + iPhone. No MP3 export in Live 🙁

Liveshow playlist?
How would you use it?
I have played live for a decade with laptop and never needed one. Whole set is in one project file anyway.

This is how DAW developers should be thinking honestly.. They need to get in that Silicon Valley mindset and start building the future. Audio app development moves at a really slow pace compared to other things.

no one has implemented the easiest, most useful feature… give me an mp3 to a cloud (phone) drive, so i can listen in the car. and no one has decent set management… how about a live show playlist? terrible oversight.

Freeks

Save to Dropbbox?
That’s how i do it with logic + iPhone. No MP3 export in Live 🙁

Liveshow playlist?
How would you use it?
I have played live for a decade with laptop and never needed one. Whole set is in one project file anyway.

This is how DAW developers should be thinking honestly.. They need to get in that Silicon Valley mindset and start building the future. Audio app development moves at a really slow pace compared to other things.

I’ve been using Bitwig and I love it. I made my last album (EP) in 1.0 and I’m currently working on another in 1.1 (since beta 1). There are some things from Ableton Live I wish BWS has but they are either small things that doesn’t matter that much, something that can be done with VSTs or just a matter of waiting for implementation. (Note: this is a personal position and may not reflect opinions of others).

That being said the multi-out and new devices have been a very welcoming experience. The multi-out feature includes the Drum Machine (AKA Bitwig’s Drum Rack) and other containers, which is a boon for me.

I’ve been using Bitwig and I love it. I made my last album (EP) in 1.0 and I’m currently working on another in 1.1 (since beta 1). There are some things from Ableton Live I wish BWS has but they are either small things that doesn’t matter that much, something that can be done with VSTs or just a matter of waiting for implementation. (Note: this is a personal position and may not reflect opinions of others).

That being said the multi-out and new devices have been a very welcoming experience. The multi-out feature includes the Drum Machine (AKA Bitwig’s Drum Rack) and other containers, which is a boon for me.

I’ve been using Bitwig and I love it. I made my last album (EP) in 1.0 and I’m currently working on another in 1.1 (since beta 1). There are some things from Ableton Live I wish BWS has but they are either small things that doesn’t matter that much, something that can be done with VSTs or just a matter of waiting for implementation. (Note: this is a personal position and may not reflect opinions of others).

That being said the multi-out and new devices have been a very welcoming experience. The multi-out feature includes the Drum Machine (AKA Bitwig’s Drum Rack) and other containers, which is a boon for me.

Dylan

I like the fact I can drop a numerology instance on the same track as an instrument. Is there a reason why ableton doesn’t allow midi out to an instrument on the same channel?? Maxforlive sequencers can be dropped in front of instruments. Yeah I know it’s a simple quick workaround but it’s one thing I’d love to see.

Dylan

I like the fact I can drop a numerology instance on the same track as an instrument. Is there a reason why ableton doesn’t allow midi out to an instrument on the same channel?? Maxforlive sequencers can be dropped in front of instruments. Yeah I know it’s a simple quick workaround but it’s one thing I’d love to see.

Dylan

I like the fact I can drop a numerology instance on the same track as an instrument. Is there a reason why ableton doesn’t allow midi out to an instrument on the same channel?? Maxforlive sequencers can be dropped in front of instruments. Yeah I know it’s a simple quick workaround but it’s one thing I’d love to see.

John Doe

Reasons?

– Have a plugin crash? No prob with the right settings. Everything else just continues to work. Press “restart plugin”. Done.

– Deals with both 64 and 32 bit plugins out of the box…

– Multiple VST folders anybody?

– VST scan in the background, starting time of Bitwig is 4 seconds here.

– Having multiple projects open at once isn’t just nice to have – drag and drop between the tabs is what makes it awesome. Devices, whole tracks, single or multiple clips…

– The modulation system is ace. I hated everything about the way you assign even a simple M4L LFO in Live… And one modulation source can modulate multiple targets in various +- amounts…

– And: Audio-rate modulation for all factory devices. Tight!

– Multi-layer automation: record your automation, then on top have additive and multiplicative automation to finetune it…

– Want the output of a synth played by a midi clip effected by a resonator effect played by a different midi clip from another track? Just put a note receiver in front of the resonator…

– Mix and match devices however you want inside one chain. Use as many effects, midi plugins and instruments in whatever order you need…

– ALT-A to activate/deactivate tracks, layers and devices so they no longer use CPU.

– Layered clip editing`. See what you work on in the context of other clips…

– Per-note-automation…

– Clip launcher and arrangement next to each other. That view alone does it for me.

– Switch fluidly and on the fly between clip launcher and arrangement on a per-track basis or with clip actions…

– Hybrid tracks, have audio and midi on the same track…

– Edit audio inside of a clip, have elements from different audio sources inside a single clip, cut it, move it, stretch it…

– Have clips on sends and even the master…

– Bounce in place.

And that’s just off the top of my head…

Cuck

Man, Bitwig employees….sigh…

heinrich zwahlen

I dont think there is much need for another DAW that lacks an integrated tactile control. Especially also if it does not espouse a fundamentally new approach for music recording and sequencing, which Bitwig does not. The interest now is with ‘systems’ that integrate hardware and computer based software, with Maschine having been the first of this kind. That depth of integration can only happen when hard and software have been developed in tandem from ground up. Nectar for Bitwig does not cut it in that regard, nor does even Push to the same extend that Maschine…even though i like Push for the step sequencing and scale playing funnctionality it adds to Live.
Secondly there has also been a shift away from wanting endless features to a desire for optimal simplicity in the worklflow, whereby it’s really rather negative to have too many options to coose from at any time. In that sense less is more and simplicity os more sophisticated than abundance.

heinrich zwahlen

I dont think there is much need for another DAW that lacks an integrated tactile control. Especially also if it does not espouse a fundamentally new approach for music recording and sequencing, which Bitwig does not. The interest now is with ‘systems’ that integrate hardware and computer based software, with Maschine having been the first of this kind. That depth of integration can only happen when hard and software have been developed in tandem from ground up. Nectar for Bitwig does not cut it in that regard, nor does even Push to the same extend that Maschine…even though i like Push for the step sequencing and scale playing funnctionality it adds to Live.
Secondly there has also been a shift away from wanting endless features to a desire for optimal simplicity in the worklflow, whereby it’s really rather negative to have too many options to coose from at any time. In that sense less is more and simplicity os more sophisticated than abundance.

heinrich zwahlen

I dont think there is much need for another DAW that lacks an integrated tactile control. Especially also if it does not espouse a fundamentally new approach for music recording and sequencing, which Bitwig does not. The interest now is with ‘systems’ that integrate hardware and computer based software, with Maschine having been the first of this kind. That depth of integration can only happen when hard and software have been developed in tandem from ground up. Nectar for Bitwig does not cut it in that regard, nor does even Push to the same extend that Maschine…even though i like Push for the step sequencing and scale playing funnctionality it adds to Live.
Secondly there has also been a shift away from wanting endless features to a desire for optimal simplicity in the worklflow, whereby it’s really rather negative to have too many options to coose from at any time. In that sense less is more and simplicity os more sophisticated than abundance.

Kevin Bell Kearney

Automation and plug-in delay compensation are the reason to switch to Bitwig!!!!!!! That is only, of course, if as a musician you actually care about your music being played back *in time* (note sarcasm) & as a musician you have no desire to get a degree in Ableton’s Byzantine Delay compensation quirks.

chester

The automation is broken, it doesn’t work. Buggy as hell and it has serious flaws.

Gasp

What’s broken about it?

Kevin Bell Kearney

Automation and plug-in delay compensation are the reason to switch to Bitwig!!!!!!! That is only, of course, if as a musician you actually care about your music being played back *in time* (note sarcasm) & as a musician you have no desire to get a degree in Ableton’s Byzantine Delay compensation quirks.

chester

The automation is broken, it doesn’t work. Buggy as hell and it has serious flaws.

Gasp

What’s broken about it?

Kevin Bell Kearney

Automation and plug-in delay compensation are the reason to switch to Bitwig!!!!!!! That is only, of course, if as a musician you actually care about your music being played back *in time* (note sarcasm) & as a musician you have no desire to get a degree in Ableton’s Byzantine Delay compensation quirks.

chester

The automation is broken, it doesn’t work. Buggy as hell and it has serious flaws.

Gasp

What’s broken about it?

ryan

*The problem is, if you’re not on Linux, I still can’t work out a reason I’d recommend Bitwig Studio over other tools.*

Personally I think Bitwig is quite different from Ableton and I find it much more fun and easier to use in many ways.

Saying Bitwig is too close to Live is like saying Cubase and Logic are too similar.

Aaron Zilch

What I’m seeing here is a lot of folks claiming Ableton doesn’t do things it actually does. Simply takes reading the manual and, in a few cases, a simple workaround ( and I’m not even talking about getting into M4L land )

For example: to bypass synths and effects to save CPU turn off the relevant Device Activator button.

I’m not not claiming Ableton is perfect. Nothing is. Part of the reason for that is that people will complain about the best screwdriver in the world because they are trying to pound nails with it. Just look at this comments section. You have some people complaining about feature bloat, while others are pining for features that are really outside of what Ableton was designed for. The worst thing any product can try to do is attempt to be all things to all people.

For example, everyone goes on about track comping in Ableton. There are many programs out there that were designed to replace the analog tape deck, and focus on the sort of recording and editing features that make sense for that purpose. Most of them aren’t great at what Ableton was designed for: Realtime “midi” and sample based track creation and performance. I myself love using Session View “legato” style launching to experiment with comping different takes together in realtime. “Lane” style comping might have certain other features that agree more with certain people…but there are other programs that do that. Live was an innovation in that you could actually compose through playing rather than constantly dragging boxes around.

Bitwig to me just comes off as copycat non-innovation. The only difference that really appeals to me is the modulation routing that they lifted from Massive. Most of the things that look like improvements seem like there is probably a comparative shortcoming ( or annoying bugs ) attached to it. And I frankly question how much serious work most of the Bitwig cheerleaders have actually done on the software ( or how well they truely understand the capabilities and workflow in Live ).

ryan

Do you truly understand the capabilities and workflow in Bitwig?

I would suggest you give Bitwig a try and see if the feature set is a ‘copycat non-innovation’

Kane

Spot on, Aaron. I agree, the only cool feature that looks pretty unique is the modulation a la Massive. There are many basic crucial things Bitwig can’t simply do that other DAWs can. As an example, they claim to have a great and superfast workflow (completely ripped off from Ableton, btw) and there’s no way to swap samples, an absolute PITA. There are other areas of the program which don’t seem to work consistenly at all, sometimes you get some random weirdness. to name one, once you write automation on the session view you can delete it. WTF!

Raffa van der Koont

You can swap samples in the browser…. you just to learn to use ur tool.

Korea

No, that’s not swapping, it’s just tedious loooong drag and drop.
Try to swap samples on a sampler of a very long device chain. Frustration at its best.

Raffa van der Koont

I have tried with a sampler and it works just the same. Just select the project panel in the browser, then used files, you have the option to replace samples.

Try reading the manual or even working with the software before posting, you may find it less frustrating that way.

Aaron Zilch

What I’m seeing here is a lot of folks claiming Ableton doesn’t do things it actually does. Simply takes reading the manual and, in a few cases, a simple workaround ( and I’m not even talking about getting into M4L land )

For example: to bypass synths and effects to save CPU turn off the relevant Device Activator button.

I’m not not claiming Ableton is perfect. Nothing is. Part of the reason for that is that people will complain about the best screwdriver in the world because they are trying to pound nails with it. Just look at this comments section. You have some people complaining about feature bloat, while others are pining for features that are really outside of what Ableton was designed for. The worst thing any product can try to do is attempt to be all things to all people.

For example, everyone goes on about track comping in Ableton. There are many programs out there that were designed to replace the analog tape deck, and focus on the sort of recording and editing features that make sense for that purpose. Most of them aren’t great at what Ableton was designed for: Realtime “midi” and sample based track creation and performance. I myself love using Session View “legato” style launching to experiment with comping different takes together in realtime. “Lane” style comping might have certain other features that agree more with certain people…but there are other programs that do that. Live was an innovation in that you could actually compose through playing rather than constantly dragging boxes around.

Bitwig to me just comes off as copycat non-innovation. The only difference that really appeals to me is the modulation routing that they lifted from Massive. Most of the things that look like improvements seem like there is probably a comparative shortcoming ( or annoying bugs ) attached to it. And I frankly question how much serious work most of the Bitwig cheerleaders have actually done on the software ( or how well they truely understand the capabilities and workflow in Live ).

ryan

Do you truly understand the capabilities and workflow in Bitwig?

I would suggest you give Bitwig a try and see if the feature set is a ‘copycat non-innovation’

Kane

Spot on, Aaron. I agree, the only cool feature that looks pretty unique is the modulation a la Massive. There are many basic crucial things Bitwig can’t simply do that other DAWs can. As an example, they claim to have a great and superfast workflow (completely ripped off from Ableton, btw) and there’s no way to swap samples, an absolute PITA. There are other areas of the program which don’t seem to work consistenly at all, sometimes you get some random weirdness. to name one, once you write automation on the session view you can delete it. WTF!

Raffa van der Koont

You can swap samples in the browser…. you just to learn to use ur tool.

Korea

No, that’s not swapping, it’s just tedious loooong drag and drop.
Try to swap samples on a sampler of a very long device chain. Frustration at its best.

Raffa van der Koont

I have tried with a sampler and it works just the same. Just select the project panel in the browser, then used files, you have the option to replace samples.

Try reading the manual or even working with the software before posting, you may find it less frustrating that way.

Aaron Zilch

What I’m seeing here is a lot of folks claiming Ableton doesn’t do things it actually does. Simply takes reading the manual and, in a few cases, a simple workaround ( and I’m not even talking about getting into M4L land )

For example: to bypass synths and effects to save CPU turn off the relevant Device Activator button.

I’m not not claiming Ableton is perfect. Nothing is. Part of the reason for that is that people will complain about the best screwdriver in the world because they are trying to pound nails with it. Just look at this comments section. You have some people complaining about feature bloat, while others are pining for features that are really outside of what Ableton was designed for. The worst thing any product can try to do is attempt to be all things to all people.

For example, everyone goes on about track comping in Ableton. There are many programs out there that were designed to replace the analog tape deck, and focus on the sort of recording and editing features that make sense for that purpose. Most of them aren’t great at what Ableton was designed for: Realtime “midi” and sample based track creation and performance. I myself love using Session View “legato” style launching to experiment with comping different takes together in realtime. “Lane” style comping might have certain other features that agree more with certain people…but there are other programs that do that. Live was an innovation in that you could actually compose through playing rather than constantly dragging boxes around.

Bitwig to me just comes off as copycat non-innovation. The only difference that really appeals to me is the modulation routing that they lifted from Massive. Most of the things that look like improvements seem like there is probably a comparative shortcoming ( or annoying bugs ) attached to it. And I frankly question how much serious work most of the Bitwig cheerleaders have actually done on the software ( or how well they truely understand the capabilities and workflow in Live ).

ryan

Do you truly understand the capabilities and workflow in Bitwig?

I would suggest you give Bitwig a try and see if the feature set is a ‘copycat non-innovation’

Kane

Spot on, Aaron. I agree, the only cool feature that looks pretty unique is the modulation a la Massive. There are many basic crucial things Bitwig can’t simply do that other DAWs can. As an example, they claim to have a great and superfast workflow (completely ripped off from Ableton, btw) and there’s no way to swap samples, an absolute PITA. There are other areas of the program which don’t seem to work consistenly at all, sometimes you get some random weirdness. to name one, once you write automation on the session view you can delete it. WTF!

Raffa van der Koont

You can swap samples in the browser…. you just to learn to use ur tool.

Korea

No, that’s not swapping, it’s just tedious loooong drag and drop.
Try to swap samples on a sampler of a very long device chain. Frustration at its best.

Raffa van der Koont

I have tried with a sampler and it works just the same. Just select the project panel in the browser, then used files, you have the option to replace samples.

Try reading the manual or even working with the software before posting, you may find it less frustrating that way.

haszari

Is there a way to alias midi clips (and automation clips)? I foolishly assumed this would be one of the things Bitwig did that Ableton doesn’t.. when I tried 1.0 there was no way to do it.

I still really like the things they’re trying to achieve – modular routing especially – but I want to be able to use a note/automation pattern all over the timeline and have all the copies update when I edit one of them. Logic can do this ..

Is there a way to alias midi clips (and automation clips)? I foolishly assumed this would be one of the things Bitwig did that Ableton doesn’t.. when I tried 1.0 there was no way to do it.

I still really like the things they’re trying to achieve – modular routing especially – but I want to be able to use a note/automation pattern all over the timeline and have all the copies update when I edit one of them. Logic can do this ..

Is there a way to alias midi clips (and automation clips)? I foolishly assumed this would be one of the things Bitwig did that Ableton doesn’t.. when I tried 1.0 there was no way to do it.

I still really like the things they’re trying to achieve – modular routing especially – but I want to be able to use a note/automation pattern all over the timeline and have all the copies update when I edit one of them. Logic can do this ..

flufftronix

“And you can genuinely deactivate devices to save CPU, something Live lacks”

Are you sure this is lacking? I do this all the time. Just have to make sure to actually turn the device off and not just mute it.

flufftronix

“And you can genuinely deactivate devices to save CPU, something Live lacks”

Are you sure this is lacking? I do this all the time. Just have to make sure to actually turn the device off and not just mute it.

flufftronix

“And you can genuinely deactivate devices to save CPU, something Live lacks”

Are you sure this is lacking? I do this all the time. Just have to make sure to actually turn the device off and not just mute it.

raverr

Overheard in the back rows of the latest gig – “Oh god, STOP THE SHOW! CANCEL THE GIG! REFUND THE TICKETS! DON’T YOU KNOW THE SOFTWARE HE’S USING IS WRITTEN IN JAVA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I’M A COMPUTER SCIENTIST DAMMIT!”

You idiots.

Not to mention the review sounding like it was written by a 50 year old ‘expert’ with nary a toe in the world of the target audience. Cos y’know, the next Skrillex/Avicii is definitely going to come from the grey nomad demo.

Tis what tis, but all you old men fighting on the internet about coding platforms, and throwing in your indentity-politics lot with large for-profit companies is hilarious.

Whatever you do, ALWAYS SUPPORT THE LARGE AND POWERFUL.

chick

Please tell me what drugs you take so I can avoid them.

foljs

Yeah, stick it to the man, and pass the bong.

raverr

Overheard in the back rows of the latest gig – “Oh god, STOP THE SHOW! CANCEL THE GIG! REFUND THE TICKETS! DON’T YOU KNOW THE SOFTWARE HE’S USING IS WRITTEN IN JAVA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I’M A COMPUTER SCIENTIST DAMMIT!”

You idiots.

Not to mention the review sounding like it was written by a 50 year old ‘expert’ with nary a toe in the world of the target audience. Cos y’know, the next Skrillex/Avicii is definitely going to come from the grey nomad demo.

Tis what tis, but all you old men fighting on the internet about coding platforms, and throwing in your indentity-politics lot with large for-profit companies is hilarious.

Whatever you do, ALWAYS SUPPORT THE LARGE AND POWERFUL.

chick

Please tell me what drugs you take so I can avoid them.

foljs

Yeah, stick it to the man, and pass the bong.

raverr

Overheard in the back rows of the latest gig – “Oh god, STOP THE SHOW! CANCEL THE GIG! REFUND THE TICKETS! DON’T YOU KNOW THE SOFTWARE HE’S USING IS WRITTEN IN JAVA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I’M A COMPUTER SCIENTIST DAMMIT!”

You idiots.

Not to mention the review sounding like it was written by a 50 year old ‘expert’ with nary a toe in the world of the target audience. Cos y’know, the next Skrillex/Avicii is definitely going to come from the grey nomad demo.

Tis what tis, but all you old men fighting on the internet about coding platforms, and throwing in your indentity-politics lot with large for-profit companies is hilarious.

Whatever you do, ALWAYS SUPPORT THE LARGE AND POWERFUL.

chick

Please tell me what drugs you take so I can avoid them.

foljs

Yeah, stick it to the man, and pass the bong.

Enki

In my opinion Bitwig is far superior to Live. The GB of sound you get with Live are crap and I’ve hardly used them. Same price tag? Bitwig is half the cost of Live suite, remember that. Sounds need to be created and this is also where Bitwig outshines Live. Obivously Peter Kirn didn’t do his homework properly before making bold statements about Live being the elephant. I have both 32 and 64 bit plugins installed and a true elephant can carry them both. I never understood why FX on all send channels including the drumrack wasn’t an option with Live without running muliple instances of the plugin. Layered editing anyone? The list goes on and on…. but you do need to do some homework to understand/know such features. More importanly, you need to listen. Just comparing the EQ’s of Live and Bitwig with your ears should be reason enough to choose Bitwig over Live. I’ve used Live for about 7 years and know it thoroughly and it didn’t took long for me to acknowlegde Bitwig outshines it. Even though they are still walking on kiddy feet I can already see the adultness in their steps.

Aaron Zilch

You can easily route a Drum Rack’s internal return channels to the main return tracks in Ableton. No multiple instances needed 😉

Enki

In my opinion Bitwig is far superior to Live. The GB of sound you get with Live are crap and I’ve hardly used them. Same price tag? Bitwig is half the cost of Live suite, remember that. Sounds need to be created and this is also where Bitwig outshines Live. Obivously Peter Kirn didn’t do his homework properly before making bold statements about Live being the elephant. I have both 32 and 64 bit plugins installed and a true elephant can carry them both. I never understood why FX on all send channels including the drumrack wasn’t an option with Live without running muliple instances of the plugin. Layered editing anyone? The list goes on and on…. but you do need to do some homework to understand/know such features. More importanly, you need to listen. Just comparing the EQ’s of Live and Bitwig with your ears should be reason enough to choose Bitwig over Live. I’ve used Live for about 7 years and know it thoroughly and it didn’t took long for me to acknowlegde Bitwig outshines it. Even though they are still walking on kiddy feet I can already see the adultness in their steps.

Aaron Zilch

You can easily route a Drum Rack’s internal return channels to the main return tracks in Ableton. No multiple instances needed 😉

Enki

In my opinion Bitwig is far superior to Live. The GB of sound you get with Live are crap and I’ve hardly used them. Same price tag? Bitwig is half the cost of Live suite, remember that. Sounds need to be created and this is also where Bitwig outshines Live. Obivously Peter Kirn didn’t do his homework properly before making bold statements about Live being the elephant. I have both 32 and 64 bit plugins installed and a true elephant can carry them both. I never understood why FX on all send channels including the drumrack wasn’t an option with Live without running muliple instances of the plugin. Layered editing anyone? The list goes on and on…. but you do need to do some homework to understand/know such features. More importanly, you need to listen. Just comparing the EQ’s of Live and Bitwig with your ears should be reason enough to choose Bitwig over Live. I’ve used Live for about 7 years and know it thoroughly and it didn’t took long for me to acknowlegde Bitwig outshines it. Even though they are still walking on kiddy feet I can already see the adultness in their steps.

Aaron Zilch

You can easily route a Drum Rack’s internal return channels to the main return tracks in Ableton. No multiple instances needed 😉

This was a mistake because the issue got assigned to the wrong person. We removed on Windows and Mac but Linux platform got lost in the noise. Aubio has now been removed on Linux too.

True Tone

Guys, this got my attention…Bitwig 1.1 just got Ott’s stamp of approval. I’d say he knows a thing or two about electronic music production: “If it proves to be as bulletproof stable as Ableton 9 has been [on my system anyway] I can see me using it live, and if they can resist filling it full of pointless DAW bloat [no fucking score editor and multisampled oboes!] and keep it light and focussed, I think it’s going to go on to become a classic, and an incredible tool for the generation of live electronic music.” (from: http://www.ottsonic.net/)

True Tone

Guys, this got my attention…Bitwig 1.1 just got Ott’s stamp of approval. I’d say he knows a thing or two about electronic music production: “If it proves to be as bulletproof stable as Ableton 9 has been [on my system anyway] I can see me using it live, and if they can resist filling it full of pointless DAW bloat [no fucking score editor and multisampled oboes!] and keep it light and focussed, I think it’s going to go on to become a classic, and an incredible tool for the generation of live electronic music.” (from: http://www.ottsonic.net/)

True Tone

Guys, this got my attention…Bitwig 1.1 just got Ott’s stamp of approval. I’d say he knows a thing or two about electronic music production: “If it proves to be as bulletproof stable as Ableton 9 has been [on my system anyway] I can see me using it live, and if they can resist filling it full of pointless DAW bloat [no fucking score editor and multisampled oboes!] and keep it light and focussed, I think it’s going to go on to become a classic, and an incredible tool for the generation of live electronic music.” (from: http://www.ottsonic.net/)

Daniel

I’m a Linux user and I did for a (very) long time try to use only open source tools, but that ended in me mostly fiddling with the environment instead of actually making sounds. I came to the conclusion that I needed a hammer (i.e. DAW) that:
1: actually is assembled and I don’t have to time and time again put it together
2: doesn’t force me to switch from my operating system of choice

So, I bought Bitwig studio and I’m quite happy with it. At least so far. But I haven’t spent nearly as much time playing around with it as I want (work work work).

I do have to say that the Polysynth is brilliant. Specially when it comes to modulating more or less every single control from LFO’s.

Ah, also, if you haven’t tried it: Try the TouchOSC (ok, there’s no good osc-bridge in Linux yet , so I tested in Windows) integration with your tablet and (at least I was) you’ll sit there with a smile on your face. 🙂

Daniel

I’m a Linux user and I did for a (very) long time try to use only open source tools, but that ended in me mostly fiddling with the environment instead of actually making sounds. I came to the conclusion that I needed a hammer (i.e. DAW) that:
1: actually is assembled and I don’t have to time and time again put it together
2: doesn’t force me to switch from my operating system of choice

So, I bought Bitwig studio and I’m quite happy with it. At least so far. But I haven’t spent nearly as much time playing around with it as I want (work work work).

I do have to say that the Polysynth is brilliant. Specially when it comes to modulating more or less every single control from LFO’s.

Ah, also, if you haven’t tried it: Try the TouchOSC (ok, there’s no good osc-bridge in Linux yet , so I tested in Windows) integration with your tablet and (at least I was) you’ll sit there with a smile on your face. 🙂

Daniel

I’m a Linux user and I did for a (very) long time try to use only open source tools, but that ended in me mostly fiddling with the environment instead of actually making sounds. I came to the conclusion that I needed a hammer (i.e. DAW) that:
1: actually is assembled and I don’t have to time and time again put it together
2: doesn’t force me to switch from my operating system of choice

So, I bought Bitwig studio and I’m quite happy with it. At least so far. But I haven’t spent nearly as much time playing around with it as I want (work work work).

I do have to say that the Polysynth is brilliant. Specially when it comes to modulating more or less every single control from LFO’s.

Ah, also, if you haven’t tried it: Try the TouchOSC (ok, there’s no good osc-bridge in Linux yet , so I tested in Windows) integration with your tablet and (at least I was) you’ll sit there with a smile on your face. 🙂

Felix

Just having the demo of Bitwig, and like it a lot. Sure it has some gaps.
But for me, the biggest advantage over Ableton is the arrangement view and its automation.
I like a lot how Bitwig combines the classic linear workflow and Ableton-style clip launch stuff – even within the same window. I actually love that.
Ableton’s lack of a professional arrangement view began to be a dealbreaker for me, after I had it for 2 years. However, I don’t want to go back to the dusty, cluttered Logic or Cubase either. Studio One might be a contender with the next update. But Bitwig looks really really hot.

Felix

Just having the demo of Bitwig, and like it a lot. Sure it has some gaps.
But for me, the biggest advantage over Ableton is the arrangement view and its automation.
I like a lot how Bitwig combines the classic linear workflow and Ableton-style clip launch stuff – even within the same window. I actually love that.
Ableton’s lack of a professional arrangement view began to be a dealbreaker for me, after I had it for 2 years. However, I don’t want to go back to the dusty, cluttered Logic or Cubase either. Studio One might be a contender with the next update. But Bitwig looks really really hot.

Felix

Just having the demo of Bitwig, and like it a lot. Sure it has some gaps.
But for me, the biggest advantage over Ableton is the arrangement view and its automation.
I like a lot how Bitwig combines the classic linear workflow and Ableton-style clip launch stuff – even within the same window. I actually love that.
Ableton’s lack of a professional arrangement view began to be a dealbreaker for me, after I had it for 2 years. However, I don’t want to go back to the dusty, cluttered Logic or Cubase either. Studio One might be a contender with the next update. But Bitwig looks really really hot.

D-One

Automation in Botwig is broken? Lol

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

How about Ableton’s plugin delay compensation automation woes? That’s been going on for 5+ years with no hint from Ableton ever fixing it. That’s 1 thing Bitwig doesn’t do. Kinda essential. I don’t even own Bitwig. I’m a Live 9 user. But I’m sick of stuff not getting fixed. Yay…we’ve got midi to audio, a shiny new controller (Push), session view automation, and a handful of stock plugin edits from Cytomic. That took 3yrs to develop? How bout we fix the blatant automation issue before adding the spinning rims Ableton. Almost everything they added in 9 can be done anyway with 3rd party plugins (Melodyne, Cytomic’s “The Glue”, etc).

Want a look at exactly what I’m referring to? Here…enjoy. You’ll find yourself listening to your automation in Live a lot closer if your using any 3rd party plugins placed before a plugin u automate….and if your mixes all of a sudden get muddy in Live and you don’t know why this will probably help. Automation to sends is especially effected. Kinda a big deal when your reverb starts way after your automation shows you it should.

Naming your input/output channels. Such a small feature but its quite important to me, much clearer to set up external instrument routings this way. I hoped bounce in place also worked for external instruments, but that needs to be addressed.

The histogram for editing / randomizing all kinds of numbers like velocity

The note events, wire up velocity from 1 track to an effect param on another track, neat.

The LFO control

Stefan

I made the switch and really happy about it. There are a few things I miss like track grouping (planned for 1.2 in bitwig) but there is so much to like in bitwig already.

Naming your input/output channels. Such a small feature but its quite important to me, much clearer to set up external instrument routings this way. I hoped bounce in place also worked for external instruments, but that needs to be addressed.

The histogram for editing / randomizing all kinds of numbers like velocity

The note events, wire up velocity from 1 track to an effect param on another track, neat.

The LFO control

Stefan

I made the switch and really happy about it. There are a few things I miss like track grouping (planned for 1.2 in bitwig) but there is so much to like in bitwig already.

Naming your input/output channels. Such a small feature but its quite important to me, much clearer to set up external instrument routings this way. I hoped bounce in place also worked for external instruments, but that needs to be addressed.

The histogram for editing / randomizing all kinds of numbers like velocity

The note events, wire up velocity from 1 track to an effect param on another track, neat.

The LFO control

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